Corrupted Normalcy
by Insanity Engine
Summary: Tejed had thought nothing more in the universe could surprise her. Kayleer thought his night would be a simple patrol of the city followed by the blessed warmth of sleep. Neither of them planned on meeting the other, and the horror that swiftly followed threw them both into more than they could handle alone. A roleplay between me and my friend, Phaze. Enjoy. 3
1. Part 1

OKAY. Following this note is four parts of a really long Metroid based RP between me any my friend, PhazonFlood. He created Kayleer, a space pirate raised by Luminoth, and I created Tejed, a space pirate hybrid. While normally there would be dashes and stars to differentiate between mine and his writings, FF seems to have violently eaten them, so the entire story is uncut and you can't tell where our writings end or begin.

I would fix that but I'm not quite willing to go through 104 pages just for dashes and stars.

Either way, the full version, unparted and with our sections spaced off, can be found at my deviantart page, which is linked on my profile.

I hope whoever reads this enjoys it as much as me and Phaze enjoyed writing it. 3

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Kayleer flinched as he struck a wirey nerve on his left arm. _This is Slix's job, not mine_, he thought to himself. He was a bit rusty at repair work, but his usual maintenance crew was otherwise occupied at the moment. He growled and set down his tools, bent his arm and tested the fingers. _Good enough for now._

Satisfied that the damage from his last sparring match was repaired, Kayleer began assembling his armorsuit. It was nighttime, and he had a job to do; surveillance and protection of the city. Every so often, a fight would break out, an intruder would break in, etc. Whatever happened tonight, though, he felt he was ready for it.

He called for Slix once more, hoping that his helper had finished his work in the overhang. The tiny mechanoid came running to his master, ready to help with the night's defensive duties. The pair walked out and began their tedious patrol of the city.

Tejed was not in a happy mood. Granted, happiness was a fleeting thing for her, but as far as her moods went, her thoughts were decidedly more toxic than usual. She didn't know what to blame her mood swing for this time. Maybe she had drank just a bit too much earlier. Maybe her previous bounty was more stressful than she had initially thought. Or maybe she was just tired. Always tired.

_"You just miss my beautiful voice..."_

The hybrid stopped walking and gave her head a violent shake.

"I'll NEVER miss you," she growled, trying to keep her voice from escalating into a yell. Night time or not, there were still civilians around, and she learned long ago that it was never a good idea to let her temper get the better of her. The voice inside her head, always so quiet, always so beguiling, snickered.

_"Keep lying to yourself, Miss Jenal. Let's see how far that takes you..."_

"Oh go fuck yourself..." Tejed muttered in response. She had a job to do, a bounty to hunt. All she wanted to do at this point was get to her ship, set the coordinates, and have a good deep nap before she got to the other side of the galaxy. Maybe if she slept, she decided, then she'd feel better, and the toxic cancer of her insanity wouldn't hurt as much as it usually did.

So, ignoring the voice prattling relentlessly in the back of her head as best as she could, she angled towards the ship yard.

Kayleer started his patrol through the city streets, half-heartedly keeping a vigilant eye. It was not that he didn't take his job seriously, it was simply that he never expected anything to happen, so it was hard to get excited about it anymore.

Slix trotted beside him, quirkily poking at the sheathed metal walkways. Before long the pair reached the shipyard. If any place was to house ruffians, it would be construction sites like these. Roomy and cluttered with huge metal vessels, it was an ideal place of refuge. Kayleer made his way stealthily through the shipyard, looking for any signs of trouble, though he doubted he'd find any. His prying gaze was all too trusting, and he was completely at ease, subconsciously sure that no one would do the young rogue Pirate any harm.

"I swear to god voice, if you existed I'd rip your head off."

_"Don't swear to god that's not nice..." _

"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOU BITCH!"

It was a moment of weakness. She succumbed to its taunts and couldn't keep her anger in check any longer. Angrily she lashed out, subconsciously glad that she had since left the civilized center of the city and entered the far deader outskirts. There was no one around to hurt. So when her claws collided with the dead husk of a long abandoned ship instead of the soft flesh of a civilian, it gave her mind a bit of respite.

Almost instantly she calmed. The haze of anger lifted and she stepped back, momentarily confused. Three deep gouges ran down the abandoned ship's hull and she flexed her hand while staring at it, feeling the tendons and muscles go taut.

_"Tsk tsk. You should really work on that anger problem." _

Tejed was through talking to it. There wasn't really any point when the voice was so bitingly sarcastic. Sometimes it fed her good information. Sometimes it helped her. And sometimes it drove her to ecstatic anger. This was one of the latter times, and she didn't want to get any angrier. Bad things always happened when she was angry.

But she closed her eyes for a moment, felt the cool air on her face, and turned to face the ship yard. Her ship was only a few minutes walk away, something alive and mechanical in a place of dead and dying husks. The voice often questioned why she would use such a place when there was a much bigger, and much safer Federation ship yard closer to the city.

Tejed's answer was always the same: "I don't like being so close to people..."

And she really didn't. She always felt claustrophobic and confined in the city. Out here she felt much more at ease. But now was not the time for reminiscing. The stars, however beautiful, only served to remind her of her work.

Without hesitation she set foot in the ship yard. Tejed Jenal had secured herself a rather vicious reputation and it kept people at bay. No one would mess with her, and she knew it. Therefore she had no fear. And if she had no fear, she had no reason to keep an eye on her surroundings.

Eyes locked straight ahead, concentration used wholly on keeping the voice inside her head quiet, she failed to realize that she was not alone tonight.

A loud metal CLANG resounded through the shipyard. Kayleer rushed quickly to the source of the noise. A vandal, perhaps? He did not know. As he wove his way through the shipyard, his mind came up with a hundred different possibilities as to who or what the noise was caused by, and by the time he came face to face with it, he had been almost sure it was merely some verminous animal.

Clearly he had been wrong. As he turned a bend around a final ship, he found himself looking at some sort of alien creature. What disturbed him most was that it looked so vaguely like him- like a Pirate. In fact, it looked like one of the despicable biology experiments his people had conducted and were no doubt still doing.

He was instantly suspicious, and raised his weapon in readiness. Thinking of the things origins, Kayleer opted to disregard his english translator, and instead called out in his native tongue. "Hold it," he roared, weapon primed and pointed right at the thing.

Tejed stopped dead in her tracks, the opened door to her ship sitting complacent, inviting, and turned a hair's breadth.

_Zebesian. _

That rough native tongue that she hated with every fibre of her being.

The clicking, growling sound of spoken Zebesian left her mouth dry and her spine tingling, and the voice inside her head even had enough wherewithal to stop talking. Silence now, pure and simple. She turned from her ship and stared unblinking.

He stood ready with a weapon trained diligently at her face, and Tejed wasn't quite sure what to feel. Anger? She was the embodiment of anger as far as she was concerned. Confusion? She had more than enough confusion riddling her mind ever since she had escaped Pirate confinement scant months prior. How about...

_"Kill him,"_the voice prompted, without warning. Tejed did the worst thing she could do: she listened. Her face deepened into a scowl, her pupils contracted into slits, and she could feel her heart start to beat faster.

"You monster," she seethed, also using native Pirate. She clenched her fist, activating the twin laser scythes in her suit. "I'll KILL YOU!"

And without waiting for a response she attacked.

Kayleer fired his powerful legs and lunged forward, dodging the blades of his attacker by mere centimeters. He tucked into a roll and came up to his knees against a ship. Through the rush of adrenaline, he couldn't help but be taken aback by the creature's words. _He, a monster?_He was not so much insulted as he was curious. Merely speaking had prompted some sort of vendetta from the thing, and judging by its appearance, he could guess why. Perhaps it was a foolish idea to speak in Zebesian-in this darkness and behind his armor he might have passed for some other alien race. His identity as a space pirate had gotten him into a misunderstanding more than once.

Slix fled from the ensuing fight- he had no combat ability after all. Kayleer realized the creature would probably not go peacefully, and whatever its tortured past, he felt no pity in the face of its hostility. "Who are you to call someone a monster?" He replied cockily, as he raised his weapon and fired upon it.

Tejed swore vilely under her breath. She had missed. It was still alive. And it was fighting back with all that it had. She hadn't been expecting a fight to break out so suddenly, but it had spoken Zebesian and she _hated that language_ with a burning vile _passion._It brought back unwanted memories of torture and testing and let loose a sour, metallic taste in the back of her mouth.

The Pirate monster ducked and rolled up against a ship and spoke to her again before firing just once. She made no move to dodge and felt the sickening impact of energy blast upon her chest. She stumbled but kept her ground, and laughed. Loud and raucous.

"Monster," she snorted, speaking this time in universal common, the language she felt second most at ease in, old world German being the first. Her amusement faded. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

Quick as a flash she sheathed her scythes, grabbed for her pistol, and fired quick. She wasn't the best with a laser pistol but she hoped to land at least one shot.

Kayleer raised his three-pronged gun to take the pistol shot head on. It merely absorbed the shot, sending him sliding backwards a bit with the impact.

"In fact I have," Kayleer replied, activating his translator so that his pirate growls sounded like coherent English. He placed a foot against the hull of a ship, preparing for a lunge. "In that reflection I see a soldier who fights for the Federation cause." He finished, rounding up a kick at the creature. He emphasized his service to the Federation, in hopes that the creature's hostility might lessen if it knew he no longer served the space pirates.

_He's with the Federation? _

The realization brought her anger to a sudden halt and it fizzled and died almost as quickly as it had come on. Now very exhausted she didn't acknowledge that fact that he had kicked her until she found herself sprawled out on the ground, hand to her very aching chest. Maybe taking that laser shot wasn't such a good idea, she thought with a mental groan.

"You're with the Federation," she gasped, hoping he'd stop his assault. "I am too."

The voice, ever whispering, had grown in tempo to a full on yell but, aside from a spasmodic facial tic she managed, however barely, to ignore its pleading.

Kayleer flinched at the creature's words. It was working for the Federation too? How strange that an experimental monstrosity would find the resolve to continue fighting- and for the right side, Kayleer thought. He removed his bearing-down foot from the chest of the creature and offered it a hand.

"I see," he replied, speaking in English. "Forgive me if your...appearance suggested otherwise." His helmet withdrew from his face, exposing his vulnerable flesh as if in a peace offering. Wary, however, he kept his arm canon at his side and ready, in case the beast turned hostile again. Its ability to speak in human language was something no pirate was capable of, at least not without a man-made translator. Kayleer decided for the moment to trust the thing. However fragile that trust was, he was curious about her origins, and he guessed that the the two beings had a similar past.

Though the voice said otherwise, Tejed accepted the outstretched hand and allowed what had moments earlier been her attacker to pull her up. Though the sight of his face filled her with disgust, she realized that he must have defected from the Pirate's if he was here working for the Federation. Tejed was smart in her own regard, just a wee bit insane.

She offered an apologetic smile, her face twitching.

"I'm s-sorry for attacking you," she stuttered, feeling the old weight of her insanity take place in her mind once again. She was tired, so tired. "But well... How do I put this lightly..." She paused and thought for a moment, before continuing, "I absolutely hate your race."

She shrugged, as though the events of moments past suddenly didn't matter to her anymore, and turned to board her ship. The door had been open the entire time, waiting ever so patiently.

Kayleer laughed- a cold, muted growling sound that caused his translator to screech in confusion. "Yeah, who doesn't?" he said, with an undertone of shame that acknowledged his physical identity as one of _them._

Kayleer met the thing at eye level and peered towards the ship. "My name is Kayleer, soldier of the Galactic Federation." He raised his mechanical arm in a human salute. "And I don't believe I've heard of a former pirate test subject running around the ranks of the Federation before."

Tejed leaned in conspiratorially and whispered in a hushed voice, "That's because I haven't told anyone."

Where Kayleer's laugh was cold and mechanical, Tejed's was loud, raucous, and very much insane, as though she had just told a horrible secret and the only thing to do was laugh at it.

"I wear my helmet everywhere why I decided to take it off now of all times is BEYOND ME!"

More laughter.

"But seriously," she said suddenly, interrupting her own spiel. "Name's Tejed. Bounty hunter."

She held her hand out in a friendly gesture and glanced up at the stars. She'd have to get going soon, she realized. The stars had moved so much since she had gotten here, and if she didn't get on her way soon she'd lose the bounty she had gone through such lengths to track.

"I have to get going quick, though," she muttered, voice suddenly very quiet. "Or I'll miss my chance..."

"A hunter, huh," Kayleer replied. Hunters were a bit iffy, in his mind. They claimed loyalty to the Federation that employed them, but as to whether their loyalty was based on money or integrity was debatable. Perhaps he was simply biased because he was a soldier.

"Good hunting, then, Tejed," he replied, sounding out the strange name delicately. He shook her scaly hand with his own metal arm and saluted once more, preparing to take his leave.

Before she set foot on her ship she stopped and eyed the curious Pirate sideways, unsure for a moment if he really was the friend he claimed he was or not. For all she knew he was a lying asshole ready to bury a dagger in her back, but Tejed was confident enough in her own abilities that if he tried she'd be able to kill him first.

"So like," she started, not knowing exactly why she was about to ask this. "You wanna come?"

Kayleer gave Tejed an uncertain look. He turned his gaze back to the city and thought for a moment about the job he was supposed to do.

"I shouldn't, really..." he thought for a moment, a strange mischief rose in the soldier's mind and for the moment he seriously considered the possibility of abandoning his duty.

"Where are we going?" He asked finally, his mandibles brimming with the hint of a human smile.

"Some planet orbiting Antares over... That way!" she announced, pointing to the constellation Scorpius up high in the sky. "And come on," she added with a devilish sort of grin. "Going there is a lot more interesting than doing... Whatever the fuck it was you're doing here."

She waved her hand dismissively in the air before leaning heavily against the door frame and crossing her arms, awaiting Kayleer's answer.

The pirate laughed in response to her condescension. "I suppose that's true. But I don't follow orders because they're interesting," Kayleer responded, but there was hardly any sincerity in his voice. He had made his decision. His armor retracted fully and compacted into an armored mass on his back. Now starkly exposed, he had acknowledged how unnecessary it was to stay battle-ready.

"If anyone asks, you forced me along," Kayleer said. He gave her a playful look and made his way past her slouched form and into the ship.

Tejed followed her new pirate companion, letting the door slam shut behind her. She had never been the cleanest of people hybrid monster things, and she hadn't tidied up her ship in a long while. There were scratches on the walls and almost illegible words in what was most likely blood scrawled haphazardly everywhere.

"That's when I almost killed myself," she said matter of factly, pointing to a string of vile curses carved jaggedly into the wall. The morbid nature of the sight didn't seem to faze her. "Voice in my head tried to take over. You know how it is."

She didn't know if Kayleer knew how it was but she didn't really care. She led him to the main command room and settled into the chair, already punching in some coordinates to the computer.

"We should be there in a day or so," she explained. "Kitchen's that way, some rooms with beds are back that way, and like... There's some stuff over there." She trailed off for a moment, thinking. "And like, don't do anything stupid," she added as an afterthought, turning to glare at him. "Or I'll kill you."

Without another word she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as the ship slowly rose, before the sight of the city made way for an expanse of stars.

"I'm going to sleep, do whatever you want."

She waved her hand in the air and got comfortable, leaving Kayleer alone.

Kayleer wondered for a moment at the competence of this hunter. He was perturbed by the state of the ship, and the nature of the messes, but he decided to pay it no mind. If his companion turned her insanity loose on him, he was confident he could deal with it.

He left Tejed to her nap and began to explore the ship. Kayleer was relieved to see that the rest of the vessel was in slightly better care than the pilot deck.

He came to a rest near a window and looked out into the stars. His view was obscured by a glossy coat of dust, but it was visible nonetheless. He considered for a moment following Tejed's example and taking a rest, when something caught his eye. He wiped away the coat of dust with his right arm and found himself looking straight into the grey-tinted visage of a pirate boarding vessel.

"Great, what has she done to piss _them_off?" Kayleer wondered to himself. He watched with dismay as the organic, living ship made contact and latched on. He called out his armor and prepared for the worst.

Her dream was interrupted not by the nagging pleading of the voice but by something completely different and very disheartening: the tell tale shudder and groan of her ship being compromised. She swore loudly once before leaping from her chair and rushing to the source of the noise.

And there he stood, armoured and ready.

"KAYLEER!" she yelled, running up to him. " What the fuck did you do?!"

"Me?!" Kayleer was irritated now. He had been stupid to let himself be dragged along by this sanity-void freak. She was clearly a target for many, and he would be seen as an accomplice. "I've done nothing, and I suggest you wise up to the real threat before the pirates aboard this ship murder us both," he growled.

He walked away from her, calming down a bit. "By the sound of it, they must have boarded the lower deck."

Tejed let her lip peel back in a snarl but heeded his advice. It would be far too foolish to get into a scuffle with him at this point in time, and although her mind worked in wonky ways she still had sense about her.

"Fine," she said once, trying to calm down her racing thoughts. "Follow me, the lower deck is this way."

She set off down a hallway, glancing back once to see if Kayleer was following. He's not the problem, she reminded herself. He's not the problem the pirates are. Just keep calm and keep your mind on a real threat.

Easier said than done, but she walked in silence, and kept her mind focused on the task at hand.

Kayleer followed dutifully, gun at the ready. He knew pirate tactics well, and he stood wary for a surprise attack that could come his way from any direction.

He heard the creaking and clawing of pirate feet on the deck floors below. They were there, they were planning something. Planting an explosive, perhaps, or something much worse. He was grateful for his armor.

"Do you have a plan? They more than likely have a few dozen troopers on us. We'll get ourselves killed if we don't think this through," Kayleer stopped, hesitant. He placed a hand on her shoulder roughly, trying to hold her back. He didn't trust that Tejed had any plan whatsoever, and assumed she was trudging blindly into battle.

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder and sort of half turned, unsheathing her laser scythes as she did so.

"They built me to kill," she hissed. "So kill I will. Just like they wanted."

The best plan, as far as she was concerned. She may have been going in blind, but she didn't care. Her armour would protect her and the phazon in her system would heal her while it fueled her bloodlust. She didn't care if she got hurt, so long as those inhuman _monsters_all died in the most painful way possible.

"Besides," she added, pausing and shooting him a devilish grin. "What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger."

"Your cockiness will get you killed," Kayleer snapped. She may be stronger for what was done to her, but he had no doubts it had shortened her lifespan significantly. "It's probably what got you captured in the first place," he continued, perhaps overstepping himself. "I suggest you listen, if you don't want to end up in a test tube again."

He let Tejed trudge forward. If she was so sure of herself, she could risk her own hide. Kayleer opted for a more tactical approach. He called to Slix, who came running to his side moments later. "Get down there and figure out our situation." he ordered. The little mechanoid gave no response, he merely obeyed. He slithed his way to a vent and tore it off, crawling in and making his way to the lower deck. Kayleer was confident he would return with useful intel that could turn the outcome of their eminent encounter with the pirates.

"Fuck you," she spat, letting him fall behind. He didn't understand, he wasn't her. Tejed Jenal had come closer to death that she ever wanted more than enough times to realize there was no point in taking the sidelines to life. She much preferred up close and personal, where she could get the full experience. For what was the point of life, if she wasn't living?

_"Don't even get me started on those pirates,"_ wheedled the voice. _"Soon enough you'll get blessed release, my dear. Soon enough."_

"Stop TALKING all the time!" Tejed yelled, suddenly furious with everything. Without thinking she brought her scythes down in the wall in an impressive display of sparks and broke into a full on run, letting them slice through the steel as though through butter. Whatever Kayleer was up to was none of her concern. All that filled her mind was the black hatred, the rage. The anger.

"Get OFF _MY_ **SHIP!**" she screamed, before descending into the bowels of the spacecraft.

"Insane," Kayleer said, dumbfounded. "She's insane!" What had he gotten himself into, following her, coming aboard her ship? Maybe he, too, was insane.

Slix sent him visual data on his HUD. He was directly above a party of pirates. Five of them were circled around a brown, bulbous object of biotechnological nature. It had long, seething tendrils that dug their way into the ship. Kayleer did not know quite what the device was, but it clearly had some purpose of sabotage. "Shit!" he swore under his breath. It bothered him not only that some strange weapon had been tasseled to the ship, but also that he hadn't a clue what it would do.

"OUT OF MY SHIP!" she screamed, bursting through the doors without warning or hesitation and catching the gang of pirates completely off guard. This was what she was unwillingly created for: the thrill of the hunt, of the fight. Of the bloodshed. She quickly brought her scythes down on the nearest living body she could reach, relishing in the spray of blood on her hot skin.

"I'll teach you to board _my ship_," she seethed, leaping at the next closest pirate, seemingly oblivious to the pulsating _thing_they had brought with them. Mind set on ridding her ship of the vermin that had infested it she continued to attack and cleave, the vigour of battle bringing a white froth to her mouth.

Kayleer watched through Slix's optics as the pirate crew was literally hacked to pieces. For all the contempt he felt for his own species, even he could not help but feel a bit of pity for them. These were merely minors, lightly armored and virtually defenseless against the cruel, blazing slash of their foe.

Tejed appeared to have lost herself in the thrill of battle. She looked ecstatic, mad with violent pleasure. It was a chilling scene; a mix of gore and pure sadism. Kayleer was disgusted.

The device the pirates had placed in the ship was busy unraveling long tendrils into the inner circuitry of the ship, moving seemingly with a will of its own. It dug its way deeper and deeper into the ship, integrating itself, threatening to take over. The entire vessel lurched as though in reaction to the thing's efforts.

Kayleer snapped his focus back to the situation at hand, and rushed to meet Tejed at the battle scene.

Without warning her eyes erupted into blazing yellow fire and she felt her scythes cut efficiently through the last scrawny pirate, his body and his head falling in separate pieces to the gore covered floor. Quick as a flash she turned her attention to the _thing_even as he ship pitched to the side, almost throwing her off balance.

"What the fuck IS THIS?!" she screeched, digging her claws into its surface, seeing nothing but rage induced red.

_"Not important,"_ snickered the voice inside her head, even at this time prodding her into more violence. _"Attack _him_, not this."_

"For the last time," Tejed seethed, clenching her eyes shut. "Don't tell me WHAT. TO. DO."

_"You're talking to yourself again. Why do you do that...?"_

The voice inside her head wasn't helping, but then it never really did. And while she could easily ignore it on any other occasion, now was a whole different can of worms.

"They're stealing my ship!" she yelled, fighting with herself. "I want this thing GONE!"

_"Steel things don't bleed."_

And at that unfortunate moment Kayleer appeared, his weapons poised, his stance ready. As the last pirate on board, Tejed forgot for a crucial moment that he was a friend, and with her red tainted vision she brought her weapons to him, instead.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Kayleer yelled. His translator failed to capture the exact nature of his horrified reaction. How foolish he had been, to approach his insane companion while her mind was still reeling with violent thrills.

The pirate minors were dead, their entrails littered the steely floor of the ship. Kayleer nearly felt the urge to vomit, his own self image making the sight of the gored bodies nearly unbearable. Though it was true he had killed many pirates in his own lifetime, his weapons were far different from Tejed's. His plasma canon burned, vaporized; sometimes an entire specimen when hit in the right places. It was the sort of weapon that was standard for a Federation trooper; benign, as far as weaponry went, in its ability to destroy a lifeform as swiftly and neatly as possible.

This sort of gore was not something Kayleer was used to seeing. Organs, exoskeleton fragments; the same vital parts that he relied upon to sustain him; were desecrated. Some still twitched with ebbing life. Enemies or not, no creature deserved this. Kayleer surprised even himself with the bubbling anger he felt at seeing his pirate brethren treated in such a way. Perhaps after all his time spent among humans, Kayleer had gained a sensitivity that, had he otherwise remained with the pirates, would have been quickly conditioned out of him.

He forgot himself for a moment, giving in to the horror, the anger, the vengeance. He was sick of his situation, sick of the gore, sick of Tejed. He rose his pronged-tipped weapon and caught her scythe-bearing arm as she prepared to drive it into his chest. He clamped down with that claw, biting into her unarmored flesh, charging a shot which, in such close proximity, he hoped to sear her with. He edged his visored face close to hers, and let loose a primal roar that he had never heard himself utter before.

Her arm halted in mid air, the glowing yellow edge of her laser scythe hissing in what could best be described as annoyance. For it was so close to tasting death, and it had been denied. In turn, Tejed hissed as well, trying but failing to suppress her anger. She didn't want to kill Kayleer. But she had so much anger to vent, so much hatred to let loose.

She hadn't been expecting him to roar at her, and if he hadn't been wearing a helmet Tejed was certain she would have seen the same anger and hatred that she felt on a daily basis. So what did she do? She opened her mouth, allowed her bottom jaw to split open, and roared right back, loud and vicious. It filled her with a sick sense of pride to hear her roar was louder than his, and, still struggling to impale him on her scythes, she smiled.

"Feels good, doesn't it," she hissed. "To feel so much bitter _hatred_?"

Once again she tried but failed. He was just as strong as her, just as determined, and she admired that.

"How does it make you feel, looking at your dead brethren?"

She snickered, and her hot breath fogged the glass of his visor, for a moment obscuring her reflection.

"When's the last time you felt _emotion_?"

The sharp crack of her broken voice echoed around the room, punctuated only by the animalistic sound of her ragged breathing. She laughed low and awaited his response, trapped in what could only be described as a death grip, for although her voice was calm and ordered, her mind was still a violent frenzy she couldn't yet control.

Kayleer did his best to ignore her prying. She was trying to rile him up, make him even angrier than he already was. What was her purpose in that? Did she truly have a death wish?

He could feel himself slipping, slowly giving way to that trademark pirate aggression he had spent so many years trying to suppress. It was inborn in him; to feel anger, pride, greed, and bloodlust. But Kayleer had always relied on his intellect to push that nature away, to consider the feelings irrational and with that very insight, suppress them.

But that sense of mind over instinct was beginning to falter. Whether it was the gore-covered room or the vile, taunting voice of his oppressor, Kayleer felt the ecstatic grip of anger on his mind. And as much as it made his stomach twist to admit it, Tejed was right. It felt good. The temptation to abandon his mind to the pleasure of pirate bloodlust, was truly unbearable.

Were these two truly nothing but violent, mindless beasts?

At that point, Kayleer would have believed so. What else could explain two allies acting like this? Infighting was so common among pirates, and now Kayleer was acting completely according to stereotype. Had he had his wits about him, he would have been repulsed.

Blocking yet another attempt on his life with a tightly-hooked clamp, he let his visor recede. He held Tejed there, drawing blood as he squeezed ever tighter with the cleaving edges of his claw. He locked his eyes onto hers, letting his mandibles twist in their sockets and let loose a rapturous roar. Black, adrenaline-seeped saliva flung from his mandibles and into the face of his opponent. He couldn't articulate a proper response; he merely reacted with the aggressive, domineering behavior so typical for a pirate. Still holding tight to Tejed's scythe-bearing arm, he reared up a kick and rammed in straight into her ribs, biting into the flesh with his metal-sheathed talons as he did so.

She hadn't expecting the sudden sharp stab of pain in her ribs, but she didn't complain. Quite the opposite. She did what she did best: she laughed, even as the force of his kick sent her to the ground, out of his tight grasp. Corrosive blood spilt from the corners of her mouth and something wet trailed from her left nostril.

"I knew there was still a pirate deep down in there," she hissed, bringing a claw up to wipe her face. When she brought her hand back it surprised her to find phazon on her fingers, glowing blue against the red of her blood. She smirked, tried to get to her feet, but the pain in her ribs caught up with her. Something deep down snapped, the sound of bone breaking. She winced, but said no more, and looked up at Kayleer.

He had her pinned; she was helpless. Tejed's fingers came away from her maw bloodied; clearly he had damaged something vital within. His instincts screamed at him, pressing him to finish what he had started. Kayleer had never seen a creature's throat look so inviting...

His body seemed to move of its own accord. He reached out with his mechanical arm and grabbed Tejed by the throat, feeling a rush of pleasure as the three clever digits pricked and drew blood.

_What am I doing?_Suddenly something besides instinct was welling up in his thoughts. For the first time, his foe's words became more than garbled banter to him.

_I knew there was still a pirate deep down in there._

Her words drove through him like a blade. He was no war monger, no mindless aggressor. The former slave had always thought himself different; a glimmer of hope for his species, that someday this war might end peacefully. Where would that hope be if he traded his composure for violent release?

As difficult as it was to muster the mental strength to do so, he let her go. His eyes widened in realization and he backed away, clutching his head with blood and phazon-tainted digits. He became aware of his accelerated heartbeat, an accommodation his body had made to fuel his violence. He focused, struggling to think clearly; to push away the anger and compose a sentient thought. He let out a muted groan and collapsed in a heap on the floor, resting on his hocked knees and staring at the ground, shaking his head.

"You're an idiot, you know that?"

Tejed snorted in abject amusement, feeling the own weight of her fury subside and pass, her mind calm down by slow, orderly degrees.

"I know," she wheezed, as she clambered pained to her feet. She took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, ignored the voice inside her head. She had come pretty close, she realized, to killing or getting killed by her new friend. Friend? Yeah, she supposed he was a friend, in a strange sort of way. The thought struck her as funny and she smiled, shaking her head.

"Let's get this thing off my ship, eh?" she stated, standing near Kayleer. She had a pounding headache and the backs of her eyes hurt. Tejed Jenal felt exhausted, plain and simple, and in the wake of her anger she was starting to feel the cold weight of sorrow. For a moment she felt like a little girl again, lost and alone.

She quickly shook her head in an effort to forget the thoughts, at least for now. There was time for that later. Right now the ship was flying of its own accord, in a direction she hadn't set, to a place she probably wasn't too keen on returning to. With a sigh she laid a hand on the thing and cast a critical glance at Kayleer.

"Right," Kayleer nodded. He was calm; in control once more to his great relief. His heart pounded painfully against his chest, as if his body was reeling from his rejection of its anger, and complaining at the fact that it had to slow down and calm itself in accord with his thoughts.

"Humans have programs for beings like us," Kayleer scoffed. "I believe they were called 'anger management' courses." He laughed. It was merely a pathetic attempt to ease the tension and mask the internal turmoil he had gained from the fight.

He took in the scene, once again being forced to observe the bodies in the room. He sighed, looking at them with a twisted face of disdain. He charged up a beam of plasma fire, and swiftly vaporized the entire lot.

He clicked a few times, calling to his mechanoid partner. He had almost forgotten he was there. Slix dropped from the vents above and quickly made his way to that familiar resting spot on Kayleer's shoulder, seemingly unfazed by his master's previous breakdown.

Kayleer made his way to the pirate device and gave it a lookover, turning his gaze back to Tejed. "It's completely taken over," he said. "I haven't the slightest idea how deep it's already gotten into your ship. Maybe if we hadn't wasted so much time with...-" he cut himself off, knowing better than to bring it up again. He growled, exasperated. "Well, it's your ship. What do we do?"

"Gin made me go to anger management courses once," Tejed muttered, giving Slix a once over. The tiny mechanical creature was amazing to her; she had never seen something so intricate and small. "Lot's of good they did for me..."

She trailed off, turning her attention back to the device and the parasitic roots it had sunk into the steel floor, no doubt tampering with the ship's computer. She sighed.

"Of course, I was also in an asylum for a year or so... And look where I am now."

Kayleer gave the device a once over himself, before stating: "Well, it's your ship. What do we do?"

"_My_ship?" Tejed responded, incredulous, not caring to mask the exasperated fatigue in her voice. "It's your people's device, Iunno what to do about it."

She crossed her arms and gave the thing a good kick, hoping her mechanical talons would at least harm it. Nothing, of course. It remained stationary, silent, feeding its roots into her ship's circuitry. Frustrated she let herself break down for a moment and sobbed, covering her face with her hands. This wasn't going according to plan, none of it was. She was supposed to be on the other side of the galaxy by now, hunting her bounty. She had planned to be back on Earth in a few days, back with her few select friends.

Back with her family.

And now this. It was one thing losing her anger like that, it was another to face the species that had mutated her in the first place all over again. The whole ordeal was bringing back bad memories that she had no intention of remembering ever again and it left a bad taste in the back of her mouth.

"Don't associate me with them," Kayleer snapped. He didn't like to be reminded of his roots, especially not after he had very nearly lost his mind. What further annoyed him was the hateful, condescending tone she spoke in when she mentioned them, as if she was completely insensitive to her present company.

Tejed began to sob, the sounds twisted and low-sounding, but unmistakably human in nature. Kayleer flinched slightly in surprise. He was more exasperated than ever, not sure whether to offer comfort or just stay the hell away. His companion had gone from brash, to violent, to depressed, all within such a short time.

He shook his head, feeling the best option was to remain neutral. Emotionally she was unstable, volatile, even, and he could well relate. But as long as she wasn't being violent, he supposed he didn't have to worry.

He crouched down, inspecting the machine carefully. Slix climbed off his shoulder and stood atop it, seemingly intrigued.

"Destroying the injector won't do any good," he began. "It's already inside." He aimed his right arm at the floor, atop a twitching tendril of the device. Three smaller prongs extended from his weapon, exuding a fine, welding flame. With it he tore a small hole around the tendril, forming a crawl space. A network of intricate circuits was revealed, one that would make little sense to the untrained eye.

Kayleer turned to Slix, and gave a quick order in his native language. Slix nodded obediently, leaping into the hole and into the inner workings of the ship.

"Now I guess we wait," Kayleer shrugged. "Unless we get wherever this thing is taking us first." He shivered. If the pirates truly were after Tejed, he could only imagine where they would intend to take her. The thought of returning to his homeworld filled him with fear.

Tejed ignored Kayleer and backed up until she felt her back against the wall, letting herself slide down until she was sitting on the floor. Despondently she watched. She watched Kayleer burn a hole in the floor, she watched Slix disappear into the inner workings of her ship, and she watched Kayleer's expressions. He looked annoyed, frustrated. Even though he was a pirate she could still read his emotions, and he looked very sorry that had come with her in the first place.

Disgusted with herself she laid her head on her knees and closed her eyes, exhaling a puff of blue phazon, the last of it having been expended from her system. It was always the same routine, the same gamut of emotions. First the anger, always the anger. Low and brooding, waiting to be felt. Then the frenzy, the raw visceral urge to _kill_as the phazon in her system rose, demanded to be burned off. Then after that came the tired and the depression, the headaches and the nausea and the suicidal thoughts. Finally, for what she always wished would last forever, the normalcy. The period of time when she was sane, for a few days. Before the anger started bubbling up and the cycle began anew.

"Phazon madness," she muttered, tired. "One never ending phazon madness..."

Now would be a good time, she thought. Kayleer was strong, dangerous. He had already come close once, almost ended her life. Despite the exhaustion she smiled, chuckled quietly. Oh how the sweet release of death seemed so wonderful, right now.

"End the never-ending torment... Would you do that, Kayleer?" she whispered, hoping he wouldn't hear. "No... Of course not. I'm doomed to live."

She sighed heavily once more and watched him work, her head empty and hollow, seeming so cold after the violent grip of her anger mere moments before. At this point in time she simply didn't care anymore.

"I'm doomed to live..."

_Phazon?_

Kayleer turned to look at his companion, flinching in disgust as a cloud of blue vapor escaped her lungs.

Oh, he knew the substance well. He thought back to the days he had spent slaving in the mines, doing everything in his power to avoid corruption and death from that blue demon.

He had seen what it could do. Many of his fellow slaves made the mistake of touching or inadvertently ingesting the stuff. It spread like a disease, seeping into your brain and driving you to violence, to addiction, to madness, and death.

A breach in his protective suit, a wound on his left palm. Back in the mines such things were often fatal. A small amount of the blue stuff had dripped from the cavern walls and permeated his skin. Kayleer had always been so careful...

The living phazon had edged into the cut, seemingly with a will of its own, and the pain was instant. The burning, that volatile burning that meant you would soon be poisoned and lose your mind. Kayleer had done the only thing he could think of to spare himself the fatal madness; and drove a mining spade through his left shoulder.

He snapped out of his memories and glanced at Tejed. _If she was once human..._He shivered to imagine the life he might've lived if he'd allowed himself to be corrupted. Termination by his superiors? That was a likely outcome. But many of those poisoned by phazon were taken for further testing.

Kayleer twitched his left arm, feeling those familiar clicking wires and metal sheaths that felt as natural now as any biological part of him. How lucky he was...

_"End the never-ending torment... Would you do that, Kayleer?"_He heard her mumbling; the phazon-mad mutation that had the misfortune of being sentient. He found himself with a shameful amount of pity for the creature, but he decided not to show it. It might dent her pride and only drive her to more anger.

"I guess you can't be blamed for your instability," Kayleer replied. He knew well what she was asking. Her suicidal thoughts... he could never live with himself if he indulged them. Calmly he walked over to her and offered that familiar mechanical hand to assist her, to pull her up once more. Perhaps an offer of help would do better than simply pull her from the floor.

"I guess you can't be blamed for your instability," Kayleer called, and Tejed closed her eyes. He had heard her muttering to herself, she supposed. It was very quiet, after all. Talking to herself was a bad habit that she was finding hard to break out of. When she opened her eyes again he was standing over her with an outstretched hand, and tentatively she took it, allowing him to pull her up.

"...sorry," she said quietly, averting her eyes. She couldn't stand looking at him right now, not because of his species, but because of the kindness he was offering her after what she had done. It seemed far too loathsome, that she, a violent mutation driven mad by the phazon, was offered so kind a gesture. She didn't deserve it, she knew.

"But I..." she trailed off, trying to find the right words. "...I should be fine for a few days, after..."

She let her words fall silent, unsure if Kayleer even really cared, and instead opted to watch the hole that Slix had disappeared so easily into. At that moment in time, Tejed Jenal felt very ashamed, indeed.

Kayleer pulled his comrade to her feet, smiling with intentions of offering the beast comfort. But she had averted her gaze, and stared at the floor instead. He had lived among humans long enough to recognize the body language.

"What do you have to be ashamed of," he asked her. "You can't help what you are anymore than I can." He laughed, a short and cut-off growl. Kayleer retracted his armor, finding relief in the fresh air on his body and the symbolic release in abandoning the need for weapons. "Although, I would never dream of comparing our lives," he continued, respectfully, releasing his grip on her claw. Although he wasn't particularly fond of his general treatment, being a pirate living among humans, he knew he should count his blessings. He was, after all, healthy, mentally stable; unlike his companion.

The ship lurched, as though someone had enacted a very sudden course correction. How far they had been on the previous course, however, was yet to be seen. Slix popped out of the hole and padded over to Kayleer, his tiny, porcelain-colored digits plinking delicately on the floor. He rushed to his master and clambered atop him. Kayleer didn't seem to mind. Slix slinked his way around his left arm, dropping something into his palm before returning to his shoulder, wrapping his lengthy serpentine tail around his neck for balance.

Kayleer looked his gift over and laughed. The tiny, glinting bit of metal, circuitry and biological nerves- it had been the AI within the pirate device. Now void of its most vital component, its purpose had been nullified. He turned to look out a porthole, wondering where they were. With all that had transpired, he could only guess where the ship had taken them in that time.

"Pfft, nothing to be ashamed of," she muttered bitterly, the rank taste of steel creeping up in the back of her throat. The sudden lurch of the ship momentarily threw her off balance, and confused she glanced around wildly, catching sight of Slix appear like a ghost from the hole.

He curled up around Kayleer before depositing something in his palm, and though Tejed couldn't tell right away what it was she had some ideas: it was probably the pirate device's main AI system. Her ship had stopped moving, she could feel it. They were still. The device had been disarmed.

The realization of what had just happened seemed to help her mood, and feeling a little better that they were no longer headed for pirate space, she allowed herself a smile. Glancing out a nearby window assured her: the stars were still once more.

"Computer, where are we?" she asked suddenly, speaking to the ceiling. There was silence and for a few moments she was scared the ship's computer had been somehow damaged, before a camera in a far corner glinted and turned to watch them.

"I have a name, you know," it replied quietly, almost condescending in tone.

"Fine," Tejed replied tiredly, in no mood to argue with her ship's AI. "Where are we... _Jarvis?" _

More of that almost tangible silence as the camera surveyed them both, mechanical iris contracting in the dark.

"...Somewhere near the star Betelguese, in the constellation Orion," was the enigmatic response. "We're no longer in Federation space. This area is uncharted... Ma'am."

Despite herself Tejed groaned and ignored the computer's snide remark, put her face in her hands as the happiness she had felt so fleetingly moments earlier faded away. Everything was going so _wrong_that it was almost too much to bear.

"We're way off course..." she groaned, doing quick calculations in her head. Insanity or not she knew how to navigate quite well, and math held no barriers for her. "It'll take a while to plot a new course back to Antares."

Tejed was starting to have second thoughts regarding the bounty they had originally set off for. It was all too easy to tell the Federation suits that had employed her that her bounty had escaped. It happened all the time, and they wouldn't argue. No one in their fancy Federation headquarters argued with Tejed Jenal, they all knew better.

She turned towards the door and made to leave, motioning once at Kayleer to follow. Their time would be much better spent at the control deck, trying to figure out just where they were, and if there was any danger here.

Way off course? Great...

Kayleer sighed. He knew he shouldn't be here, shouldn't be wasting even further time away from home, from his duties. But something about his companion was keeping him intrigued, from demanding to be returned. Perhaps he was simply interested in seeing the result of so many pirate experiments in action. Those he had seen before were merely mindless, disgustingly augmented creatures whose lifespans were cut so short as to be virtually nonexistent.

He watched as Tejed left the lower deck; the place where five lives had been taken, almost six. He brushed off her request for him to follow, opting to gaze out a porthole for a moment instead. The ship's computer had told them they were near some human-named constellation, and nothing more. He did not know the human names for them as well as he did his own species'.

As he looked out onto the stars, he noticed the silvery, glinting silhouette of a planet. It seemed familiar. He realized it was one he had seen in pirate records a long time ago, one that was briefly studied and then quarantined and abandoned due to the deadly viral lifeforms that lived there; Twin Tabula. He smirked. Was that where the pirate device had been sending them? If they had crash landed on its surface, they would have been dead within hours of the event. How twisted, he thought, that the pirates would choose to send Tejed to a place where she would succumb to painful disease, instead of just killing her in battle. Or maybe he was merely mistaken. It was in the same system, he realized, as one of the former pirate colony worlds as well as another former Phazon-mining planet- though not the one he had been stationed on.

"The sooner we get out of here the better," Kayleer said to himself. Slix trilled, whether in comfort or random glitch, Kayleer didn't care, he smiled. He took his leave of the lower deck and followed Tejed.

Tejed stared listlessly out the main window, watching the stars unmoving on their background of blackest black and listening to the sounds of Jarvis working away diligently. Kayleer was still down there somewhere, she surmised, doing that _emotional_thing he was so damn good at.

She wasn't quite sure what it was but something about that pirate rubbed her the _right_way, as opposed to the wrong way that she got from everyone else. Sure he pissed her off, but he was so cute with his mandibles and his guttural laugh and his-

"NO," she yelled, sitting up straight. The computer stopped for a moment and a camera swiveled to watch her, confused. Bitter, she sunk back into the seat and simmered in her emotions.

"I can't be falling for him already, he's a fucking pansy," she muttered dejectedly. "Fucking... Pansy ass. Fucking... _Pirate..." _

The stars held little reprieve for her and she lazily spun in circles in the command chair, before something caught her eye, and she found herself jumping to her feet. Staring. Cocking her head ever so slightly to the side like a confused dog.

"Computer-" The clicking stopped and she caught herself. "..._Jarvis._What's the right there? That planet?"

Silence for a moment.

"Twin Tabula, ma'am."

"Don't call me that," she snapped without thinking.

"Would you rather I call you something more fitting... _Sir?_

"Are there any other planets in its system?"

"Tallon IV, Lady."

Quietly she sat down and thought for a moment. The planets held nothing particularly special to her. She knew there had been some pirate activity on Tallon but she wasn't too keen on checking it out, not right now, anyway. Still, there had to be a reason they had been guided her.

"Jarvis, call Kayleer up here," she instructed.

Kayleer looked up as he heard the metallic voice of the ship's computer call to him.

"Kayleer, your presence is requested on the pilot deck," it rang.

"I know, I know, I'm already on my way there," he mumbled. How impatient was she? He'd only lingered for a few minutes before she went to the trouble of having her artificial lackey demand him to come. Once again he suppressed his annoyed feelings. He didn't like having to give her so much leeway with her emotions, but he knew her mood swings and volatile behavior undoubtedly stemmed with the insanity-driving parasite within her. Then again, he wondered which emotions were caused by phazon, and which were simply due to her natural, less-than-stellar personality. He supposed he would never know.

He arrived on the pilot deck to see his monstrous companion spinning around in the pilot chair. _How mature..._he thought sarcastically to himself. He shook his head and gave her a serious look. "What is it?"

Kayleer looked pissed to see her and she laughed.

"Why do you always look so pissy?" she asked, feeling mischievous and spiteful. He shot her a dirty look and she shrugged. "Hey don't blame me you're the one who always looks like there's a geemer up your butt."

She calmed down and stood, pointing out the window.

"Are you familiar with this area? Why would they bring us here?"

A frustrated huff of air escaped the pirate's nostrils as he stood and endured Tejed's prattle. Choosing to pay more mind to her last question, he answered.

"I am," he said. He pointed out a porthole to the distant, silver planet. "My best guess is they were sending us there to die." He growled, "Since that is the direction we appear to have been headed." He was annoyed that the pirates had very nearly succeeded, and that his choice to follow the bounty hunter had almost earned him death by twin fever. "I don't know if humans have any record of it, they probably only know about the two more... famous planets in this system," he continued. "Surely your AI has information about Zebes and Tallon IV?"

He folded his arms, shooting that trademark serious gaze in her direction. He didn't appreciate her joking, even less so because of where they were and what had nearly happened to them.

Tejed burst into raucous laughter.

"They finally decided to kill me, eh?" she said, stricken by mirth. "Took them long enough. They've been trying to get me _back_for long enough, I suppose."

She wiped a tear from her eye and shook her head, still smiling, ignoring the serious look the pirate was giving her.

"Nah, I know enough about Zebes and Tallon as is, I don't need cranky up there schooling me." She motioned towards the ship's computer and was sure she heard it sigh in annoyance. Shaking her head, she stood and made to walk past Kayleer, stopping by him and putting a hand gently on his shoulder.

"Stop being so serious all the time, lighten up," she said with a smile. "There's still lots to be happy about, eh?"

She patted him and headed towards the small kitchen connected to the pilot deck.

"It'll probably take Jarvis a little while longer to plot a new course. If you'd like I can make us some tea in the meantime."

The spite had gone and Tejed felt normal again, almost happy. She made a conscious effort to latch onto the new turn of emotion for a while, instead of falling back into depression and hate. She knew it bothered Kayleer and the pirate looked plenty annoyed already. Maybe a change in attitude would do him some good, both hers and his.

And as far as she was concerned, warm tea was the best thing ever.

Kayleer sighed. He realized how often he was using that very human response as of late. Was he gaining an affinity for the reaction because it was so amusingly unlike what came naturally in pirate reflex? Or was his companion merely so mind-numbingly headache-inducing that he was forced to do it so often? He decided it was best to ignore how much she annoyed him. He became complacent; any state of mind she was in right now was better than what he had previously witnessed.

"Human pabulum leaves a vile taste in my mouth," he responded coldly. He didn't mind if he was devoid of nourishment for the duration of the flight. He had enough stocked energy in his suit to keep him going for months. Such was what emergency situations in which he became stranded called for. He smiled, _I suppose this counts as being stranded,_he thought to himself. Despite his apparent objection he followed her anyways.

"Suit yourself..." Tejed said quietly, taking a seat at such an angle that she still had a view, however obscured, of the pilot bay. Kayleer walked in but didn't take a seat, and she looked at him quizzically. Feeling decidedly not suicidal and very not angry, a first as far as she was concerned, she decided this was as good a time as any to engage in some small talk. Maybe it would help whittle away the time a bit, as Jarvis calculated a new route.

"So..." she started, trying not to piss him off even more than he already was. She thought for a moment but she couldn't think of a question that wasn't inherently personal. She was curious as to his arm, and his origins, and what made him leave the pirates in the first place. But those questions were probably best left for another, less hostile time.

Letting the tea steep she studied his face for a moment. The way he sighed all the time reminded her of Gin. He sighed all the time, too. Usually in response to her antics. Tejed was very annoying at times, she admitted.

"...what do you eat?" was all she could think of asking. It wasn't like she didn't know: she was half space pirate, as well, after all. Her humanity outshone the pirate genes, but she had been with them long enough to know how their culture worked.

"I don't suppose you have anything that originated from the planet Aether," Kayleer asked rhetorically. Once he escaped his confinement in Aether's Phazon mines, it became his home, the sentient race there his liberators and guardians. He had adapted to survive on the rich assortment of plant life it had to offer. He smiled as he remembered the pleasant, spiking taste of the blueroot tree, and how the Luminoth had avoided it like the plague.

Choosing to indulge the positive change in her demeanour, Kayleer pulled up a chair next to her. He sat with his claws between his knees, his back arched forward. Humans often sat like this when they wanted to appear casual, and though he found it slightly more difficult with his long, extra-jointed legs, he managed. Slix bounded off his shoulder and onto the table, eyeing the tiny, porcelain cups and tapping on them with his delicate digits. He was naturally curious, and despite his prying gentleness he managed to crack one of the things, a large shard of the material breaking off and letting the cup's contents spill on the table.

Kayleer laughed. _At least I don't have to drink it now._Thoroughly frightened by the small shattering, Slix bounded back up his master's arm and onto his shoulder, dripping tiny flecks of tea from his toes as he did so.

Tejed flinched visibly at the cracking of her good china and suppressed a hiss, quickly fighting down the sudden surge of anger that had flooded her mind. Surprised the little robot bounded away to Kayleer, leaving spots of tea on the counter top, and tentatively Tejed reached forward, taking a broken shard of cup between her claws.

"These were my grandmother's cups," she said quietly. "She gave them to my mother, and then my mother gave them to me when... When granny died."

She sighed heavily and let the shard drop into the puddle of fresh tea. No. She was too tired for anger right now. Too exhausted from earlier. Now was not the time, anyhow. So she forced a smile and took a sip from her cup.

"Nah, nothing from Aether," she said quietly.

"Sorry," he said, glancing at Slix. The little thing showed no remorse for his action, but then again he really couldn't. He bowed his head and hesitated, before slipping down again to the table, picking up the shard and putting it back in place. He examined the cup for a moment, scanning it with his clever, information-gathering eyes. After that he ran a tiny finger across the broken seam, letting lose a tiny, modified welding flame. When he was satisfied with his work, he clambered back on to Kayleer and looked at Tejed expectantly.

Kayleer smiled. Repair work; that's what he had built him for. To rebuild and repair his damaged prosthetic and armor when he returned from battle. He never really expected it to be put to use fixing a mutated human's teacups. How amusingly mundane.

Tejed couldn't help but smile at the small machine's quirky personality. Or lack thereof. There was something about the little thing that was just intrinsically humorous that even Tejed found her spirits lifted just by watching him.

"How did you two meet?" she asked after a moment, inspecting the now unbroken tea cup with a less than critical eye. Though the repair job was less than stellar, the cup had the ability to hold liquid again, and that was good enough as far as she was concerned.

"Oh, and thank you, Slix."

She wasn't sure if Slix cared, but a thank you seemed to be in order.

Kayleer shrugged. He stroked the underside of Slix' metal helm with a steel digit, neither expecting nor receiving any expressive reaction from him.

"I built him," he replied. "I was always a pet person, I suppose. I've learned to crave the unconditional companionship," he smiled. It amused him to note that pets were a common practice for all the species he had lived among in his lifetime. But Slix was more than a mere pet, he was his maintenence crew. He flexed his metal fingers, thinking of how dismantled his arm might be without him.

"Sorry if I don't have any questions for you," he continued. "I'm not sure if there's anything I could ask without triggering something negative."

Tejed snorted in laughter, almost choking on her tea in the process.

"What, are you scared I'll flip my shit?"

That said she envied Kayleer and his mechanical companion. Far too often she felt the pang of loneliness on her long voyages out in space. She had friends, yes. A family. But considering what she was and who was still after her, it was dangerous to stay on Earth for too long at a time. And it pained her to admit it, but she felt her family was better off without her at this point.

And Kayleer was probably right. Depending on what he asked, there was that chance, however small, that she would indeed flip her shit. The pirate knew her mood swings well already and wasn't ready to take chances. She admired that. He had intelligence about him, something that her race seemed to be severely lacking in even in this prosperous age of technology.

"Can't say I blame you," she said after a moment, craning her neck back to glance into the pilot bay for a quick moment. Her computer was still diligently ticking away and she wondered what was taking it so long.

"As a matter of fact I am," he replied. And it was true; he didn't want to risk triggering another episode like the one he had seen before. Noting her response, he was relieved that she agre

d with him.

"Maybe you should look into getting a cat," he scoffed, though he feared for the safety of anything living she took in her care. "Or at least a cybernetic one."

Slix was twitching, looking this way and that. He took in the conversation with a blank stare, trilling quietly on Kayleer's shoulder. He then leapt from his perch and padded over to Tejed, taking care to step over her tea cups as he did so. He looked up at her, not daring to touch, just merely observe.

Startled Tejed quickly leaned back, away from the curiously prying gaze of the small machine. She would have jumped clear from the seat, but like Kayleer, her long double jointed legs posed too difficult to get free of the human made seat in such a short time.

"Why's he looking at me like that," she whispered. In the pilot bay, Jarvis' insistent clickety clacking finally ceased, signalling the completion of his work. He would have alerted Tejed right away, but sadly he had been programmed with a hint of curiosity, and instead of speaking he remained quiet and watched.

"He's probably noticing that you're an ally and that your suit is in need of repairs," Kayleer told her. He growled in bemused laughter. "Don't tell me you of all people are afraid of him."

Only half joking, he rose from his seat and trudged to her side of the table, just in case she tried to bring a blade to his precious pet. "Go on, give him the okay, he's done well in keeping me up and running for years now," he said, flexing his left arm. Her suit was in bad need of maintenance, and he marveled at how it was still even functioning.

Instantly suspicious Tejed put up her guard, falling back into the mindset of a bounty hunter for a moment. She saw what he could do. The small the machine was very dexterous, could worm his way into the smallest of spaces, and had a keen mind about him. She wasn't too keen on him running all over her like a little parasite, getting those welding flame fingers into the nooks and crannies of the suit she had stolen herself months back.

Without realizing it her upper lip curled into the thinnest of sneers and one of her hands curled into a fist; not to attack, but out of a shy sort of distrust, a feeling somewhere in the back of her sick head that Slix and Kayleer might backstab her if she let her guard down for too long.

"...I don't know," she confessed, never once taking her eyes off Slix. He still stared expectantly at her and at that point she realized just how bad her suit was. It clicked and it clanked and it was all around loud, large, and in dire need of some upkeep. It didn't help that neither Jarvis nor her knew much about suit repair, and every time Gin tried to help she brushed him off.

Maybe it was time to just accept the damn help already, instead of acting all high and mighty all the time.

So she allowed herself to relax and muttered a quiet, half-hearted 'sure', decidedly unsure if she had just allowed a whole host of trouble to happen.

Slix trilled quietly and tentatively climbed his way up her armored shoulder. Hers was unfamiliar to his tiny pedes, but he managed to do it with a slithery sense of grace. Almost immediately he set to work patching up the cracked and tarnished seams of her armor, just as he was so used to doing with Kayleer. Tejed's bitter expression didn't seem to faze him.

Kayleer watched, intrigued. The sight was amusing and he didn't even attempt to mask the sly smile that creased across his mandibles.

Feeling bold, he approached the two, giving Tejed's suit a cursory glance. "Pirate tech?" he asked. How familiar the design was, and now that he had a closer look he was very certain he had seen something similar before.


	2. Part 2

A shiver ran down her spine as Slix worked his way up her arm, around her back, and settled onto her shoulder, immediately going to work fixing every crack and seam he could find.

"I know you're smiling," she stated, not even bothering to look at Kayleer. She could feel his amusement at the scene radiating from him like a sick miasma and it made her feel slightly nauseous. He was just so... _Peaceful_that it was sickening.

"Pirate tech?" he asked, edging closer, inspecting her armour. Tejed rolled her eyes and sighed, biting her tongue before she said something spiteful.

"Yes," was her deadpan response, not trusting herself to say anything else. She was trying to keep herself in a reasonable state of mind. Trying, of course, being the keyword.

"Something wrong?" Kayleer asked. He truly didn't understand her. As prideful as she was, one would think she would appreciate the complimentary repair job the tiny mechanoid was giving her. Her suit was in nearly as bad shape as her dishevelled ship.

Slix was a sort of tension breaker between the pair. He was an unemotive little machine merely doing his job, while hateful undertones sparked between his two onlookers.

"You said it yourself before," Kayleer addressed her. "Lighten up." He glanced at her suit, giving it a skeptical expression and nothing else. She had been mutated by pirates, perhaps fitted with the suit by them. Or, more likely, she merely stole it. He decided to quit while she was still stable and not ask any more questions that could spark bad memories for her.

He admired Slix's repair work, looking up once to glance at one of the ship's cameras. Slix was not the only one being observed.

Presently the machine finished and scampered back over to Kayleer, seemingly proud of himself, and Tejed let out the breath she had been holding in, let her stiff stance relax. Much to her surprise, the creaking was gone. The cracking of joints, also gone. Her suit responded much more fluidly than it had in a long time, and she smiled.

"I have to hand it to you, Slix is pretty amazing."

She stretched long and hard, feeling her joints pop and crack even while her suit expressed no dismay at the stretches she was able to pull off. Kayleer instructed her to 'lighten up' in much the same fashion she had earlier, and she rolled her eyes.

"Yes mom," she drawled, smirking.

"Sir, I hate to interrupt your moment, but I have successfully correlated a new trajectory back to the star Antares as per your request."

Startled, Tejed's attention snapped up to the camera, then the pilot deck, before she realized Jarvis had been watching them for some time now.

"How long ago did you finish?" she asked shrewdly.

"Why, Tejed," the computer responded, using her name for the first time in a long while. "I only finished a few seconds prior to alerting you. Don't you trust me?"

"No," was her simple response. But she ignored Jarvis' spite before instructing him to make way towards Antares once more, and without any more arguing, the computer obeyed.

"A compliment from you? Now that is even more amazing," Kayleer scoffed. Slix scampered up his chest and rested his front pedes on the top of Kayleer's head. Tolerating the position for now, he sat back down, wondering if they should return to the pilot deck and oversee the ship's movement or merely stay in here and continuing chatting, awkwardly.

"Antares," Kayleer began, sounding out the word. "I'm not familiar with it, but, then again I don't know many human constellations," he smiled, leaning back in his seat, Slix scrambling to accommodate his position as his tail was pressed against the back of the chair. He knew pirate and Luminoth astronomy, and it bothered him a bit that he had never really taken the time to relearn them in English.

"I could teach you," Tejed offered, pushing the pilot bay to the back of her mind and smiling hopefully at him. "I know all the stars ever, just say the word!"

She flashed him a toothy grin, hopeful that she could get him talking, at least about something. He was always so quiet.

"Relearning all the constellations in English?" Kayleer scoffed. "Seems like more of a chore than it's worth." He'd already done it twice, a third time? He laughed, despite his objection he decided once more in favor of complacency. "I suppose I'll indulge you. Any interest you have besides violence is a breath of fresh air." He smiled, turned to his companion as he clinked his fingers across Slix's tail. "I'm all ears."

Tejed was positively giddy with excitement. She loved the stars. Everything about them made her so happy. Watching them, learning about them, navigating them. It was as though the deep of space was one of the few, if only, things that made her really truly happy again.

"Well right now we're orbiting the star Betelguese in the constellation Orion, right?" she started, pointing out a porthole at the brightest red star burning on the velvet black of nothing. "It's bigger than Earth's sun, Sol, than Sol is to Earth. Utterly huge, _fantastic._It shares the same space with Bellatrix, Salph, and Rigel, and the three Kings make up his belt: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. That's where the Orion Nebula resides. A splash of the most subtle purple and red..."

She prattled on some more, moving on to Antares and the role it played in the constellation Scorpius, the scorpion, before getting lost in her own excitement, muttering first about Scorpius than Triangulum before going off on a tangent about the Whirlpool galaxy and Andromeda and Cassiopeia.

At this point she wasn't even sure if Kayleer was listening, but he had opened that can of worms all on his own, saying yes. It had been his fault. Tejed was experiencing real happiness at that point in time, and for a moment, talking about space, she was no longer insane.

"Uhuh..." Kayleer wasn't really following. She was going too fast for him to understand much of what she was saying, but he let her talk anyways. She seemed too happy for it to be a humane thing to ask her to slow down or stop. Instead he merely smiled and nodded along, letting the assault of words fly over his head in droves.

He knew their names, just merely in another language, and that, he decided, was enough for him.

He leaned his head on a claw and listened, not to the lecture but purely to the sound of her voice, the soft hum of the ship beneath his feet, the steady beat of his heart and the shifting of gears within Slix. The sounds melded together, telling a story of where he was and where, perhaps he was going. He was hardly aware that his eyes were wandering and his thoughts were becoming hazed. He stopped thinking entirely, and merely listened.

After a good while, Tejed realized that he was no longer listening, and became silent, casting him confused eyes. The pirate had sort of nodded off, though she could tell he hadn't fallen asleep. It looked as though he had retreated into his mind, into a place where all he had to do was hear and experience and exist.

Tentatively she approached him and waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. Though his eyes were open the smallest fraction, he didn't seem to be seeing anymore, and confused the hybrid sat across from him.

"I envy you," she started quietly, not really caring if he didn't listen so much as hear her words. "You can retreat back into your mind and not get hopelessly frightened of yourself. That must be nice."

No response. She sighed heavily and watched the stars go by.

"You come from a different planet entirely," she started again, thinking. "But I was born and grew up on Earth. I was human at one point, right? Aha, yeah I know. _Crazy ole' Tejed was human at one point?_Scary, eh? Yeah..."

She slumped forwards onto the counter top and put her head in her hands.

"I was actually born in a small village in Germany about... 27 years ago. You probably don't want to hear all the little bits of pieces of my life, but for 27 years I can assure you I was _not_insane, nor was I a monster. I was just... Normal..."

She trailed off, remembering happy thoughts.

"Really, I just want to go home, but that's never going to happen, is it? No. Never..."

Kayleer's eyes swiveled to meet hers. He had been listening. The words he was hearing now were English, something he understood. None of the 'Orion' and 'Alnitak's she had been rambling about before. She was telling him a story.

"I believe you," he responded. He had guessed that she was human once, though not by her appearance... He looked out a porthole and straightened his posture. "I was normal by my own species standards once," he began, contemplative. "I was a slave. But, another species freed me from my service." He paused, Slix slinked around his shoulder, poking his head around to look at his master while he spoke. Kayleer raised his mechanical arm in gesture, "They gave me this," he moved his hand and tapped a digit on his head, "and this."

"I used to be normal," he laughed. "What a terrible thing it was! To be stupid, capable of little more than anger, submission, and fear. Such is the short life of a slave..." he quieted down, looking at Tejed with a empathetic eye. "I suppose freedom from normalcy takes different forms."

"Maybe this is your normal," said Tejed, feeling introspective. "And they just locked it away, kind of like they did to me. And you broke free, because you could see through the cracks."

She smiled at him.

"Really though, I suppose it's all for the best, right? I mean, if none of this bullshit had ever happened, I wouldn't be here right now, talking to you. I'd still be on Earth, being normal. Looking for a job I'd never get, scratching for an income that's never enough..."

_Maybe this was all for the best, _she thought with a reminiscent smile. _Maybe. Maybe..._

"Never thought of it that way, I suppose," Kayleer responded, contemplative. "Though, 'breaking free' might be an exaggeration. I was dying; I was rescued," he smiled, memories of his escape, an escape from everything, bringing a smile to his mandibles.

"And if that hadn't happened to me, you'd be dying of twin fever by now," Kayleer continued. If he and Slix hadn't been on board, he wondered if Tejed would have been able to disarm the pirate device before it completed its mission.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs to their length in the unfitting, human chair. "I was almost infected by phazon. I could've ended up dead, or in a test tube. Or I could've lived out my short life span and died never knowing what the outside of the mines looked like; never knowing what it was like to be intelligent or truly sentient... But that's just it- I'm lucky."

"Fate has a strange way about it, I suppose," he said, resting his head on his metallic digits in thought.

"Then again if you had never come with me, I might have left earlier, and would have never encountered the Pirates that just tried to kill us," she retorted, smiling wryly.

"And I wouldn't be orbiting Betelgeuse, I'd be out by Antares by now, alone. By myself. Probably beside myself with craziness. Like, _literally_beside myself. Did I ever tell you that I hallucinate sometimes? I think it's a phazon thing."

She waved her hand in the air dismissively, not too eager to think too deeply about the adverse affects the phazon was having on her.

"They may have been waiting for you," he responded. Was she really going to suggest the attack was due to his lousy timing?

"And I know it is," Kayleer got quiet. He looked at the floor. "Many of my brethren were infected. Not through tests, just working in the mines. They went... insane, to say the least."

He shook his head. He didn't want to remember. The way they had screamed in pained bloodlust, how their eyes turned toxic blue and they brutally ravaged anything near them. How, once infected, they set themselves to gorge on the stuff, furthering the process. Until they were killed by their overseers, or taken for testing, for torture and dissection. It disgusted him further that the building up of such research had led to Tejed's creation.

He rested his arms on his knees and took a slouching posture, eyeing his mechanical arm, remembering the natural one whose place it had taken, and what he would have gone through if it were still there. "How lucky I am..." he trailed off.

"Oh pfft, I know," she replied quietly. "I was just trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. I've been being chased ever since I escaped."

Suddenly feeling very depressed she slumped forwards and buried her head in her arms as the sudden and quite unexpected weight of everything came crashing down upon her.

"You have no idea how lucky you are," she said, close to tears. "You're not crazy, you're not insane. You have your mind about you. You aren't nothing more than a string of numbers that signifies 'just another experiment'. You have a name and a purpose and all I have is... Phazon."

She broke down, unable to keep it in any longer. Just like that, she lost her tenuous hold on her sadness and even the stars couldn't alleviate the pain in her mind that she couldn't get rid of.

"You think you know what it's like to be corrupted," she sobbed. "But you don't live with it 24/7, you only felt it once, fleetingly. And you ran away as fast as you could because it was terrifying. But then here I come. I can't run away from something that lives inside me, I can't hide from it. Every time I see my reflection it's there staring back at me and every time I close my eyes I can see it living in my blood and-"

It was too much to take and she collapsed into a sobbing mess, a crying heap, the light blue glow of her phazon infused tears casting dim light in the gloom of the kitchen.

Kayleer had thought the worst to fear from her was a violent outburst. He hadn't expected this.

She was right, he would never know what it felt like. All that time he spent in fear of it, and in the end he was grateful to have escaped the very life that Tejed was forced to endure. How selfish he had been, to speak of his luck when she was sitting right across from him.

He felt an instant pang of guilt. One of the less pleasant results of the Luminoth's tampering, but one he had requested nonetheless. Slix bounded off his shoulder, perhaps sensing the tension. Kayleer shut his eyes and buried his head in his claws. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he didn't know what else to say. In his mind he wished fervently that he had a way to help her, to purge the corrupting poison from her system. But there was no way to do it. It was there, in her cells, in her blood, in her brain and sinew and heart. It was never leaving.

Her gaze was down at the floor, her yellow, slitted eyes proving that they had retained the human ability of tears. Kayleer rose from his seat and walked over to his distraught companion. He knelt down to meet the taller creature at eye level and placed a hand on her shoulder. He said nothing more, and merely looked at the floor, his eyes closed in dignified silence. He felt the weight of guilt and his own helplessness wash over his mind.

Tejed had always been a touchy feely sort of person, even though it rarely showed through these days. She loved to cuddle and she loved to hug and she enjoyed the simple pleasure gleaned from sharing her space with someone else who deemed her a friend just as much as she them. Though it didn't happen as much anymore, she always longed for contact. Or at least for someone to tell her, honestly, that everything would be okay.

So she surprised Kayleer immensely by suddenly and quite unexpectedly wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close into a hug, desperate for that little bit of comfort, regardless if it came from a pirate or not. Because as far as she was concerned, Kayleer had shown more humanity than a lot of people she knew back down on Earth, and that was saying something.

"Sometimes it talks to me," she confided quietly, her voice soft. "Sometimes, in the darkness, I can hear it whispering, and there's never anyone there to make it stop. But sometimes, I can ignore it. And other times I can't. And right now I just want someone to tell me that I'll be alright."

She sobbed into his shoulder like a small child afraid of the dark, grateful for the companionship he was showing her.

Kayleer's eyes widened in surprise. His legs buckled and he fell out of a crouch and full onto the floor.

Humans were the only species he knew that did this. As social and emotional as the Luminoth were, even they did not exhibit such a behavior, and it was far from space pirate nature to even appreciate the existence of non-violent contact. It felt so unnatural to every part of him that it was all he could do to not tear away. Something kept him there, on the floor, embraced by his sobbing companion.

He was somehow able to overcome the initial shock and discomfort as he heard her pained words. He struggled to remember how this was done, how humans reacted to being 'hugged'. His arms shaking, he returned her embrace and his expressive eyes softened to something less distraught. "You're not alone anymore, it... it's going to be okay..." he managed to say, stuttering from the unnatural feeling of being in such close contact. But despite his nature, he managed to remain.

Awkward or not, the hug felt nice, and after a moment the sobbing stopped, and all she did was cry freely, still holding him tight.

"It hurts."

Was all she said, feeling the familiar pain of the phazon in her body, in her mind, before she said no more and allowed herself to relax, hoping that Kayleer would relax as well. She knew that pirates, and a lot of other species, didn't give hugs, and she wondered for a moment how an entire species could survive without physical contact bonding them together.

But humans were social animals, indeed, and contact was an important part of their overall personality. No matter how much she mutated, no matter how much phazon invaded her body, she'd still be human through and through, and she still required companionship in order to thrive.

A moment later she pulled away, wiped the tears from her face, and looked at Kayleer. That was it, she just looked, studying him curiously.

To say the embrace was awkward would have been an understatement. But Kayleer was used to suppressing his instincts, and though they had screamed at him to let go, he couldn't. Out of respect for Tejed's emotional state, and of human culture, he had allowed it to happen. And even now, strangely, he did not find himself regretting it.

_It hurts._

She finally let go, and Kayleer felt the stiffness fade, his nervous muscles relaxed at the comforting increase in space between the two beings.

"I know," he said, eyes to the floor. "But you are strong," he looked up, meeting her eyes and giving a warm smile. And he meant what he had said. He had seen other experiments. Huge, disgusting, augmented beyond recognition and mad with that power. They were nothing like her. "You didn't allow yourself to become a monster."

"I'm not a monster," she repeated quietly. The words held a curious weight in her mind and made her realize that no. No she wasn't a monster, not yet, not now, not ever. She smiled warmly at him, fighting the urge to wrap him in another hug. He looked awkward enough as it was, she didn't want to make it any worse.

"I'm not a monster... No. No that's not true is it? When the phazon builds I have to burn it off. And the monster comes out."

With a heavy sigh she stood up and looked out a porthole, at the stars that filled her with so much happiness.

"But that's not going to happen for a few days yet, right? No, I'm fine for now."

Still smiling, for his words had lifted her spirit so much, she walked out into the pilot bay and just stood, staring out the huge windows that made up the cockpit of the ship. From here she had a good view of the cosmos: stars and nebulae the most brilliant of far off galaxies swirling in the void. For a moment she considering turning the ship right around and heading back to Earth, instead of pursuing her bounty. There was no guarantee it was still there after their little detour. She could easily she that she had lost it.

But she needed the credits, sad to say. She couldn't go back empty handed. The blow to her monetary gains far outweighed the blow to her pride. The hunt had to go on, regardless of what she wanted. Jarvis had said it would take a few hours or so to get there at their present speed, with the warp drive going full tilt.

Faster than the speed of light, they were travelling, and with no resistance outside it felt like they were standing on solid ground. It made her shake her head in amazement, the leaps and bounds technology had made. So why couldn't the phazon be removed from her, if the technology was so advanced that they could travel between the stars faster than the fastest natural force? Too many what ifs, too many new things to worry about.

The faster she got to Antares the faster she could get back to Earth and have everything return to whatever normal passed as these days.

Something he had said seemed to have revived her. He saw that glow of happiness reclaim her face as she regained the composure to stand, repeating his message to emphasize how it had struck her. Kayleer realized the change in her made him happy, and it wasn't until she rose up to her full, massive height that he realized he was still on the ground, legs tucked beneath him, claws on the floor, looking quite childish and pathetic.

He snapped out of his daze and, slightly embarrassed, climbed to his feet. Even at his his full, 6.8-foot bulk, he was still far shorter than Tejed. Slix circled his feet, trilling loudly, as though querying his master as to what had just transpired non-verbally between the pair. He brushed off some dust that had collected on his scales during his time on the floor, trying to reclaim his dignity.

"Last time I checked, monsters don't hug," he replied quietly, still dusting himself, peering out a porthole into a blurred expanse of stars. They were moving, and fast, and it somewhat relieved Kayleer that they had a destination. It gave him something to look forward to.

Smiling she settled down into the pilot chair, fighting the urge to spin around like a child again. She had just gotten comfy, milling over the happy thoughts in her head, when there was a sudden insistent beep from the main command console. Nothing too loud, nor was it a siren. But it indicated that something was there, with them, in their vicinity.

Curious she stood and stared out the window, but nothing caught her eye.

"Jarvis, what is that?" she asked curiously. The beep continued.

"Long range scanners have picked up another vessel," was the bored reply. Tejed felt her heart suddenly start beating faster as she felt the familiar grip of fear. When she tried to speak, her voice was barely a whisper.

"...pirates?" she asked quietly. There was a sound, as though negating her question.

"The make is unfamiliar, but it's not Zebesian, no." There was a moment of silence. "Miss Jenal, it seems as though we have found your bounty, not at Antares, but somewhere on the planet Aether."

She perked up and glanced back at Kayleer, brightening.

"Looks like we won't have to go far after all," she said with a smirk. "Are you up for a trip to Aether instead?"

Kayleer's eyes brightened immediately upon hearing the name. His duties as a soldier had kept him from home for so long, he had never consciously thought about the day when he could return there. Masking his glee he spoke quietly and controlled.

"A trip back home would be... nice," he said simply. It had been years since he had even seen a Luminoth, and it was no surprise to find he longed to be in their company once more. He wondered to himself what became of I-Sil, the warrior, his rescuer, and her mate U-Lir, who had given him the life he had now. They were still alive, no doubt, together in the lush bogs of Torvus. The war had ended eons ago, and the cycle of a Luminoth was centuries long.

Kayleer became lost in a daze, remembering everything he missed about his adopted homeworld. It lasted only a moment before he snapped out of nostalgia and back into the moment at hand. He nodded approvingly at Tejed, then looked eagerly out a porthole into very familiar constellations.

Tejed chuckled good naturedly to herself at Kayleer's obvious attempt to suppress his joy and watched the stars go by, Aether slowly coming into view. Aether was substantially closer than the Antares system was, and it took far less time to travel the immense distances involved.

Tejed had never been on Aether before. She had heard the stories, of course, and had studied a handful of alien planets in her spare time in case she should ever make planetfall there. What she had read about Aether seemed very inviting, indeed. All the different climates had sounded so lush, so vibrant, even the desolation that was the Agon Wastes.

Maybe she just craved something different than Earth. Either way, she took over manual control of her ship as they approached Aether and gently brought it down through the thick atmosphere, pleasantly surprised to see heavy clouds and rain spatter against the windows in place of never ending black.

Presently the ship came to a halt, its heavy landing gear sinking into the soft, spongey earth below. Jarvis had indicated that her bounty had himself made planetfall somewhere in the same area, and Tejed thought it best to land as near as possible, in case there should be trouble.

The ship stopped completely and the hum of the engines faded to silence, leaving its occupants in the quiet of Torvus. Far above Tejed could hear the calming pitter patter of rain on the hull and for a moment, relished in the quiet.

Kayleer could hardly believe his luck when he saw the environment that had taken shape around them. He felt pathetically childish at how much he wanted to burst out of the ship and run, sinking through the mud and peat of the bog. The subtle and familiar, sweet sulfury smell permeated the ship as it automatically replenished its air supply with the oxygen-rich atmosphere outside.

The plinkling sound of rain on the ship filled the pilot deck with beautiful music, and Slix chirped wildly, frightened by the noise. "No point in wasting time," Kayleer said softly, smiling. "Can Jarvis... open the hull?"

Tejed waved her hand dismissively and the hull opened, filling the room with the beautiful sweet fragrance of life and bringing with it a pleasantly cool breeze that felt so nice against her phazon heated skin. For a moment she forgot what she was here for and followed Kayleer off the ship.

The first thing that struck her was how loud it was here. Everything was saying something, amid the cold shower of rain that never seemed to end. Her mechanical claws sunk deep into the muddy earth and she stepped back, momentarily alarmed and unused to such an environment.

She glanced over at Kayleer. He looked like he was in bliss.

"What are you so happy about?" she asked, her hair already sticking wetly to her face.

It took him a while for him to hear her. He was completely distracted. He felt a rush of nostalgic pleasure as his sharp, clawed toes sank into the muddy water. Slix had found a hold in the root of a titanic tree, preferring to keep his small body out of the mud for fear of being sucked down.

Kayleer stopped to listen, taking in the scene around him. The sounds, the beautiful sounds... The croaking of courting krocusses and the gentle pulse of water from the hydlings beneath the bog. The sounds of the native bioforms mixed with the pattering of rain on water, and on tree roots and on the comically out of place metal of the ship.

"There's nothing better..." he replied.

"It's a beautiful place," said Tejed quietly, stepping past him. "But as much as I'd love to just sit and enjoy, we do have a bounty to catch."

She didn't really relish the sensation of cold water seeping into the cracks and crannies of her mechanical legs. It was an unnerving sensation and it made her shiver. Water meant rust, and rust meant drying out her legs meticulously later. Water always managed to find its way to the hardest to reach areas and irritated the hell out of her.

But she didn't voice her discomfort and instead pointed off into the marshy jungle, where Jarvis had earlier pointed her.

"He's that way, apparently," she stated as she put on her helmet. Not for show but for a bit of protection, and the added advantage of having her HUD guide her. "Stole something important from the Federation a while back and has been on the run ever since. After you?"

She bowed politely and took a step back, waiting for Kayleer to ready himself. There was never any point in taking risks, and the Federation had been very vague when they described her bounty to her.

Kayleer sighed. He averted his gaze from the scenery and back to Tejed, a tad disappointed but understanding nonetheless. He didn't particularly want to go bounty hunting, but he supposed as a Federation soldier he had a duty to help bring in a fugitive.

He activated his armor. It slinked over him in segments, protecting him, preparing him for violence. He was less than excited to say the least, but he was grateful for where he was and who he was with. "Lead the way," he said. His brilliant blue visor flashed over his face, distorting, however slightly, the beauty of the world around him.

Tejed lead them into the thick brush, pushing aside huge spreading leaves as she did so. Where normally she'd hack and slash her way through the alien vegetation, now that didn't seem like such a good idea. Kayleer was positively beside himself with joy, and she felt if she attacked the flora, he'd rebuke and attack her.

They didn't have to do much wandering. The sound of another space craft came loud from the marsh up ahead, and out of habit Tejed unsheathed her scythes, movements slow and precise like a cat. She signalled at Kayleer to stand his guard and moved on ahead, peering through the brush.

Ahead was a clearing, much like the one they had landed in, though this one was burnt and charred from ship exhaust. Its owner didn't seem to share the same respect for nature that they had and had gone out of his way to destroy instead of preserve.

The ship was on, idling, its engines set to a dull roar that drowned out the sound of the rain. Though the ship was on, it didn't seem to be manned. The cargo doors were wide open, exposing the dark innards. Tejed could see crates inside with Federation stamps, but no signs of life.

"What do you think?" she asked Kayleer, her voice hushed.

"I... I don't know," he replied simply. He had never seen a ship like this one before. He looked around, trying to make sense, search his memories for something similar.

He decided to get a closer look. The ship was open, exposing its stolen cargo, and yet its occupants were nowhere to be seen. Moving carefully, he peered around the edge to see just what had been stolen.

He felt his heartbeat falter as he took in the sight of drove after drove of phazon tanks lining the inner hull of the ship. "No..." he was shocked, terrified, and moreover disgusted. Tejed had said the bounty was wanted for stolen Federation property, and he now knew what it was. He didn't want to believe they were breaking the taboo by keeping this substance in existence. After the destruction of Phaaze, its use was strictly banned. Why then, did he see the Federation emblem emblazoned on each and every luminescent blue tank?

He backed away, eyes wide with fear. He had an inherent dread of the stuff, and just seeing it brought back painful memories of witnessing infections, and how close he himself had come to it.

_I don't want to be infected... I'm not strong enough. I will lose.._

His legs felt weak as he continued to slowly increase the distance between himself and the deathly blue demon. He was almost too distracted to notice the sinister, hissing voice coming from the ship's captain.

Someone spoke to him in Aetherian, the chiming, resonant sound of a Luminoth voice. It would have been comforting to hear were it not tainted with a hissing, tenor noise.

"The famouss Luminoth-turned pirate. How amusing," it hissed.

Kayleer looked to see what had addressed him, and to his dismay he saw the twisted form of his adopted species, blackened and jutting with mutatious spines.

An Ing-possession? But how? Their world was destroyed decades ago, only shortly after Kayleer had been created and before he had ever come to know the Luminoth. He had only heard of the Ing through lore, and war tales. Too see one possessing his Luminoth brethren, body taken over, no longer his own, it was sickening.

Kayleer was weak, he knew that. The first Luminoth he had seen in years, twisted into this foul monstrosity. It terrified him to think what had happened to the others, to his family. Were they all victimized in such a way since his departure? The thought terrorized his imagining mind and he collapsed, his armored knees falling stiff into the cold peat of the bog.

Behind her helmet, Tejed bared her teeth and hissed at the Dark Luminoth, even behind the steel and glass of suit smelling the corrupted _stench_of the dark creature that had taken up residence in the once proud Luminoth.

It's voice was twisted and echoing, its words overlapping in a way she couldn't quite place. It sounded like their were two beings speaking at once, despite the alien words it spoke. It seemed as though, un possessed, these Luminoths had such beautiful, musical voices.

She'd have to remember to speak to one, to see if it were true.

"You're under arrest," she breathed, low and sultry, voice warped even more through her helmet. She held up her scythes and pointed them at its head. "For stealing Federation property. I suggest you surrender."

Though the creature was alien, it through back its head and laughed, its black and purple spines trembling in mirth. It said something in that language she couldn't understand and gestured back at the ship, as though showing off. Tejed followed its outstretched arm and felt her heart leap into her throat when she saw it.

_Phazon._

So much of it, each volatile blue container stamped with a pretty Federation logo. The tips of her scythes trembled and she felt sick to her stomach just looking at it. Quickly she averted her eyes and took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. Why would the Federation have phazon? A question she wasn't sure she wanted asking.

Suddenly very confused she opened her eyes again and glared at the possessed Luminoth. It didn't matter whether or not the phazon was Federation or not, at this point in time. The Luminoth was a criminal, through and through. And he needed to be stopped.

"You are under arrest," was all she said.

The corrupted creature merely laughed at Tejed's cocky response. He didn't take her seriously, how could he?

"Under arrest? Don't make me laugh," it taunted. It understood her English words, but the Luminoth could not make use of that inherent skill of universal translation in the other direction. That benign, mind-permeating ability had been lost in its corruption, and a cold, single langual voice came out, one Tejed could not understand. But he could tell, that merely by his defiance, she would get the message.

Instead he focused his energies on Kayleer. The terrified pirate was shaking, head downward to the bog, his mind reeling with pure, pathetic fear.

The loss of free will, it was his deepest, truest nightmare, and here he was surrounded by it. By phazon, sitting there menacingly, waiting to be contracted, to explosively infect and take over. By the malevolent Ing within his Luminoth brother, controlling his thoughts and very being. Kayleer felt helpless, weak, his eyes wide and pupils contracted beneath his opaque visor. He couldn't even muster the strength to move.

"I took over my fair share of pirates in the dayss of the war," the spectral monster continued, moving in close to his petrified victim. "Oh.. they fought at firsst, but in the end they liked it. They lovved the power, the anger. It was so fun to feel their putrid glee become one with that which I gained from possessing them," he laughed. "Oh, but you wouldn't like it would you."

He knelt down, taking the pirate's armored chin in his dainty, stolen fingers. "No, you're more like a Luminoth. You don't like power if you have to trade your free will for it," he smiled coyly, that trademark Luminoth smile with eyes alone. "Sad really, I like pirates better. You should've stayed with them."

Kayleer didn't respond. As much as he wanted to blast the monster where it stood, he couldn't. A force stronger than his will kept him tied to the ground. He was scared what would happen if he offered objection. The looming threat of possession or infection tainted his thoughts and forced him into a submission he had not so willingly accepted since his days as a slave.

He ignored her, as though she didn't exist, focusing his attention instead on the cowered pirate. Tejed understood his fear, but not to the extent that he was portraying. Phazon scared her, because she feared losing control. And the Luminoth scared her, because she had never seen a creature such as this before. But she rose up past her fear and entered the anger.

She couldn't stand back and watch this _thing_hurt Kayleer, despite the bored sort of indifference it had given her. The Luminoth wasn't scared of her. That would be its first mistake.

Without stopping to think she readied her scythes and leaped at it, colliding heavily with it and throwing it to the ground before it could do anything to Kayleer. They both fell into the muddy earth and Tejed quickly brought not her scythes but her closed fist down hard and fast, hoping to break something in its face instead of killing it.

She didn't know why, but she did not want to kill the Luminoth. She thought maybe, just maybe, she could get that _thing_out of it and restore the once proud creature to its former beauty.

But it wasn't as delicate as its twisted looks said.

It grabbed her hand before it could make contact with her face and jeered back.

"Don't think you can dessstroy me that eassily," it rasped, and even though it spoke Aetherian, she understood the meaning all the same.

Tejed had flung his oppressor off into the bog. The two enemies stared at each other, at each others necks, inches deep in the muddy water of Torvus.

Kayleer turned to watch. Tejed had saved him. He shook his head, trying desperately to regain the composure he had so easily lost.

Slix rushed up to his fallen master. He circled around and stared up at his visored face. He put his tiny, mud-covered pedes on his leg and gave him what Kayleer could only swear was a hopeful look despite his creation's expressionless face.

A shaking breath escaped the pirate's nostrils and he found the strength to stand. He couldn't allow his fear to make him selfish and unable to help Tejed.

The dark Luminoth grabbed Tejed's impending fist, stopping her attack short. He pushed her back into the soggy floor of the marsh and let loose a putrid hiss from his voice box, one that no Luminoth would ever utter naturally. A dark light surrounded his left hand and formed a blackened blade, and he brought it down straight in the center of Tejed's armor, aiming to stab the powerful thing straight into her heart.

Kayleer rushed to help her. Before the Luminoth could do any damage to his comrade, he rounded up for one of his signature, powerful kicks. He whirled around once before landing, driving a talon into the dark things twisted face, throwing him back towards his ship. Kayleer landed heavily, the weight of his armor bringing him down to nearly his knees in the bog. He approached Tejed and helped her back to her feet, turning his attention back to their attacker.

His fear dissipated for the moment, replaced by the need to help. To help Tejed, to help the tortured Luminoth that was still inside this creature, and most of all, to help rid the galaxy of the pestilence within the ship before them.

Kayleer pulled her up from the sucking mud and they both turned to look at the possessed creature. No words were spoken, only thoughts. Shared with imperceptible body language. A worried glance at Kayleer. A sad shake of the head. Her ears falling just a fraction of an inch. The Luminoth could not be saved. Only by dying, would he truly be free of the demon that had stolen his body and mind completely.

The creature was much stronger than Tejed had anticipated. She didn't care. She was just as strong, she knew it. Regardless, she would kill it, no matter how strong it was. She readied her scythed and rushed it again, this time taking no chances. There was no saving. There was only death.

The Luminoth stood and stared, smiled with its eyes. She did not falter, seeing only red. She screamed in rage and drove her scythes into where its head would be, only to feel them slice effectively into cold, hard steel, the beast having moved at the last possible second.

"FUCK," she screamed, having missed her target. He was fast, too. Something else she hadn't expected. She brought her scythes from the ship's hull but they caught on something, and a vicious yank brought not only her scythes free but a sudden deluge of raw phazon, and terrified she jumped back.

Too little too late.

The Luminoth laughed, a raspy, dark sound, and spoke in his alien way, "I wass hoping the pirate would feel the tasste of power, but you'll do jusst fine."

Tejed stumbled and fell to the ground as the mutagen took hold, the yellow of her eyes slowly building up to an intense blue. The ground around her crackled with radiation and the Luminoth turned back to Kayleer, other plans on his mind.

"Fuck," she hissed, phazon drool dripping from her mouth. It hurt every aspect of her being, left her immobilized in pain and twitching spasmodic on the ground, doubled over. She couldn't stop the Luminoth, not yet. Not without becoming a monster.

Tejed Jenal was terrified.

"Tejed!" Kayleer called her name in desperate plea, but it was useless. She was coated in phazon, it seaped through the fine cracks in her armor, poured into the bog and spread that malevolent glow like wildfire. Slix bounded away to the safety of a treetop, terrified of coming into contact with the stuff.

Suddenly he was surrounded by the blue demon he feared so much. His heart was racing and it was all he could do not to collapse again. No, he needed to remain calm, collected. He needed to help Tejed, get rid of the Luminoth.

Their foe was relishing in what had just transpired. He stood calmly, allowing the phazon to pool at his feet while he watched Kayleer panic. "Go ahead pirate, _let_it in. You know it tempts you," he laughed. The stuff had no effect on the dark creature, and he opted to merely watch the two allies struggle.

He turned to Tejed, smiling that mouthless smile that looked so darkly twisted on his face. "What an interesting beast you are. I'm curious to see what you'll do with so much phazon inside you," the Luminoth leapt up, his powerful, agile body allowing him to land square on the hull of his ship. "Oh, I think it would be more interesting to watch you destroy him. You'll do it, I can feel it. That corruption will drive you to kill the nearest living thing," he laughed. "To have that release, it will feel so good, don't you think?" He cared not if Tejed understood him. The Ing was excited to watch the blood pour between the two allies. The thought of witnessing that was even more attractive than destroying them himself. Why risk it...

Kayleer could feel the blue demon pressing against his armored feet, trying to get in and touch something living. But his armor was strong, it resisted, even if it would only last so long. But the phazon slowly eating down his armor was the least of his worries. He watched in horror as Tejed writhed, seeming to lose her mind as she neared the brink of total corruption.

It was pressing against her mind, devouring all that she was, replacing it with something other, something _hungry_for release. Her skin was hot, on fire, and she ripped her helmet off and screamed, trying to tear it from her mind, succeeding only in tearing her scalp and bloodying her brilliant white hair.

The Luminoth leapt up and away, leaving them alone. He was right. In the grip of corruption, Tejed would go for the nearest living thing. Every living being was revealed to her phazon veiled eyes: every living thing a red dyed map of arteries and veins and a single central pump beating like mad.

The only heart she could see right now was Kayleer's, and though she desperately wanted to turn on the Luminoth, the corruption said otherwise.

_Kill him,_it whispered seductively, its voice like oil and honey. She screamed again, her voice warped and low, a grotesque mash up of pirate and human, before shakily finding her feet in the tainted marsh water.

"I'll... k-kill," she stuttered, grabbing futilely at her head. She lashed out with her claws and sunk them deep into a nearby tree before turning her blazing blue eyes on Kayleer.

_Prey._

The corruption won out. She could no longer say no, the pain was too _intense_. Without hesitation she had him pinned to the ground, her claws itching at his throat and her eyes seeing nothing but red.

Kayleer was pinned in an instant. His corrupted friend moved too fast for him to even have a chance to react. Putrid water flung from a muddy crater as Tejed forced him into the poisoned bog, her lengthy metal-sheathed talons wrung tightly around his neck.

Her strength was unbelievable, her digits tainted, pulsing with phazon. No grip should have been able to do what hers was doing, literally bending the armor beneath them. Kayleer could feel his armor caving in, slowly crushing his windpipe. Dark, violet blood started to trickle from his neck as the shards of armor were compromised and penetrated. But still they held- the last barrier between his blood and the phazon-filled water outside. No... At that moment he wished fervently that Tejed would kill him before the toxic, infectious water poured into his suit. No, NO!

Death was better than infection, better than what was happening to Tejed. He would not have the same strength she did when dealing with it. Kayleer felt he would cave in like a coward instantly, skipping the rare moments of sanity and turning instantly into a mindless beast like the one before him.

The layers of armor held, but they wouldn't forever. Kayleer could feel the icy breath of the pestilence rasping again his nearly-exposed neck. He didn't want to be infected... he didn't want to die. But those seemed like the only possible outcomes. His oppressor was the only one who could change that.

He could feel his breath coming shorter and shorter as it became more difficult to breath. His thoughts became hazed, his eyes started to close. _This is it..._Whether he was going unconscious, dying, or soon to be corrupted, he didn't know, he couldn't focus on anything. One last desperate plea. "Please... Tejed..." was all he managed before the lack of oxygen to his brain forced him into stasis.

The blood drove her on. Seeing it welling around her claws, seeping forth from the cracks in his overly resilient armour. _Why won't you die,_she thought, her mind a pained haze of blue and red. She growled low in her throat, a particularly large glop of phazon drool landing on Kayleer's visor. Just a little longer, so close to death. Unknown to her, she grinned wildly.

"Please... Tejed..."

He went limp in her grasp, his eyes closing behind his visor and his breathing slowing. The words rung a bell, struck something buried deep within her mind. Her face contorted in pain and she lessened her grasp, suddenly wildly confused.

_I'm not a monster, am I?_

_"You belong to me," _cooed the corruption, working its insidious tendrils deep into her brain. She grabbed at her head again, confused and pained and everything all at once. It was like a dam had been opened and her entire body had been flooded with something she could barely even control. But barely still left some room to strike back and take over.

"Kayleer," she hissed, suddenly seeing him for who he was.

_"NO. Kill him. Do it for usssss..."_

No words. Only anger. She couldn't control the corruption, but she could redirect it if she so chose. Shuddering she turned, catching sight of the Luminoth monstrosity watching triumphant from the top of his ship, enjoying the show. Sitting there like an insect, confident that he could not be reached, and that they had killed each other for him.

He was in for a surprise.

She exhaled once, blowing the air out her nose in a blast of brilliant blue and gritting her teeth so hard she could feel them grinding against each other. Twitching spasmodically she stood and took a step towards the ship, shaking her head in defiance. The phazon burned in her mind like a blazing comet of pain, lighting up her eyes and filling her mouth with the taste of her own blood.

The Ing gave Kayleer a quizzical stare. _Well, is he dead or isn't he?_he asked himself. He didn't have long to think because once the phazon fueled monster was through with the pirate, it headed towards him. He rose from his perch and tilted his head. "Oh, you're frightening, aren't you," he taunted. He wasn't afraid; the Ing was confident he could match her, terminate her easily. He was cocky, as was his nature.

Kayleer lay unconscious. The rain pattered noisily on his listless armor as the phazon around him slowly ate away at his suit. Slix was watching, unforgotten, from a bearerpod high in the Torvus canopy. His master was hurt, soon to be more so, if nothing was done. Bravely he rushed to the bog below, feeling the painful blue substance erode his tiny digits as he moved. Though small, he was strong, and he grabbed Kayleer by the helmet and dragged him to shore, out of the bog and the toxic water. Normally in these situations he would immediately set himself to repairing the suit, but Slix's tiny, repairing claws were broken down to the wires from the phazon exposure, as was most of his body. Satisfied his master was safe from harm, the tiny mechanoid collapsed on top of him, air pouring from his vents as he reeled from the unpleasant feeling of deterioration.

The Ing-possessed Luminoth leapt back into the phazon-filled bog below. Dark energy flowed around his hands and formed two scythes on either arm. They looked nothing so much like his natural form, which he could not take in this hostile, natural world. He longed to reclaim it, his true form. He dreamed of returning to the Dark World and devouring his former host alive with his own, powerful body. That was what had brought him here, brought him back to the dismally light counterpart of his homeworld. He wanted so much to discover a way to use the phazon aboard his ship to revive Dark Aether, reclaim what was rightfully the Ing's.

The beast stood in his way. He couldn't allow it. He charged, scythes primed, ready to terminate the monstrous being before she muddied his plans of resurrecting his world.

Tejed was having none of this. She caught him in mid charge and dug her claws into his flesh, drawing not blood but corrupt darkness that writhed and squealed in the light. In the corrupt madness there was no time nor need for words, only action and anger. And it burned so deeply within her.

A struggle ensued. She was strong, but so was he, the possession granting him increases to all the Luminoth's natural abilities and then some. Dark muscle rippled underneath soft Luminoth fur, tainted black from the Ing's corruption. He lashed out and kicked her in the stomach, catching her off guard. She retorted with a savage slash to the face, ruining one of his eyes.

He cried out in pain and clutched at his stolen face, staggering back. Tejed jumped on the opening and pushed him back into the open ship, back into the dark where the only light was blue. Radioactive.

"You can't kill me," the possessed alien hissed. "You're nothing but a weak, _mortal __**beast.**_"

"Fuck you," Tejed hissed right back, pushing him into a wall and shattering another tube of phazon. Blue ran free over the floor, collecting around their feet as though alive. Growling ferociously she snapped forwards and bit him in the face, her double jointed jaw opening wide. Blood spilled freely, mixing with the phazon at her feet, and suddenly the luminoth went limp in her grasp.

It took her a moment but she tore her mandibles free and the now limp body fell to the floor, twitching as the corruption of the ing slowly faded away, the creature now dead. Blood and gore splattered her face. In the silence all she heard was the frenzied screaming in her head.

_"...Thank you,"_ came a voice, different from the incessant wail of the phazon. Calming. Her shuddering faded and she listened. On the ground, the near dead Luminoth spoke to her with his mind, faded fast. _"I've had to live this way for far too long. Thank you... for freeing me."_

It died in silence, amid the phazon and the blood, and Tejed turned away. The phazon still burned, but the thought of Kayleer managed to keep her aware, instead of mindless.

Slix trilled quietly above the fallen form of Kayleer. He wanted so much to help, fulfill his purpose, his duty to his master. He was still breathing, just barely, the damaged armor of still biting down on his neck. The restriction the damage was putting on his breathing would be fatal in the end. Slix couldn't remove it, he was useless, and Kayleer couldn't retract it in his unconscious state. Slix raised his chirping in distress, a quiet, cooing noise resonating through the bog. He was crying for help- at this point, they both needed it.

She could hear the noise of Slix's alarm call; they were close. She broke into a run, breathing far too heavily, her skin far too hot. Excess phazon dripped from her eyes and her nose and the corners of her mouth, catching in her throat and burning the backs of her eyes.

She came to a halt when she saw him, fighting the overwhelming urge to rip his body to shreds. Her entire body was shaking with repressed energy so she did the first thing that came to mind: took it out on a nearby tree instead.

"FUCK," she screamed loudly, scaring Slix but having no effect on Kayleer. The tree shook and bent and eventually toppled right over, before she turned and took a few hesitant steps towards Kayeer's still form. The phazon still burned, but not as much. She could feel it slowly ebbing way, draining from her mind.

"Kayleer," she rasped. Her throat felt red and shredded from the screaming. Kneeling beside him she saw that his his neck piece was severely dented, restricting airflow to his lungs, and quickly she tore it free, along with his helmet. He breathed in suddenly and she allowed herself a satisfied sigh.

Kayleer gasped for breath. A strained, slightly choked sound. He reached a hand to his throat and felt blood. Blood? He jerked in panic. Where was he? What had happened? Had he been infected? He took a moment to collect his thoughts. No burning, no reeling insanity... he was stable and calm and had his wits about him - for the most part. Having just regained consciousness, his mind was still a tad fogged and confused. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the looming figure of Tejed. The last thing he had seen was her above him with a hostile claw clamped tightly around his throat. Whatever had happened since that... he hadn't any idea.

Her eyes were blazing blue and she looked angry, murderous even. But clearly she had been able to overcome it, and saved him rather than kill him. He was proud that he had the privilege to be with such a strong willed being. He envied her. His throat was in pain and it was hard for him to speak. Luckily he did not need to articulate much in order for his translator to work. He coughed, a tiny bit of black blood trailing down his mandible.

"Are you alright?"

She snorted in abject laughter and shook her head.

"No," was all she said. Tired she pulled him up before sitting heavily next to him.

"It's dead," she announced, voice cracking from the strain. "I k-killed him. Bit his face r-right off." Feeling nauseous she looked up at the sky, closing her eyes. The rain washed down her face, cleaning the blood and gore from her skin. Cooling her body.

"But he thanked me, before he died."

Falling silent she fell back on the words it had spoken to her, in her head. They had made her feel so calm. Was the rest of his race as calming, she wondered. So full of good will and happiness? She hoped so. Exhausted she leaned into Kayleer for comfort and closed her eyes, feeling the last of the corruption seep away. Her heart fluttered a few times before finding a comfortable rhythm now that it was powered by blood and not phazon.

In the quiet aftermath, all she did was listen to the beating of Kayleer's heart.

Kayleer smiled. He closed his eyes. That sounded about right. The Luminoth were proud and noble. To be robbed of their will was a fate worse than death; a fear, Kayleer realized, they had passed on to him. He was happy for the freedom Tejed was able to give the suffering Luminoth.

She pulled him close to her. He was too tired to object, and this was different than before. He had been injured, she had saved him. She needed to be close for that.

He could feel the close contact giving her the comfort she needed to purge the phazon from her mind. He felt an overwhelming sense of empathy. Her tranquility spread to him like a song that filled every trickling corner of the marsh. The greatest gift the Luminoth had given him; the ability to feel and share the emotion of another person. It was almost as if the human's desire for connection had spread to him as well. He reached a hand to her head and pulled it to his. He rested the brim of his forehead against hers and felt the beating of her happy feelings intensify with the closeness.

Slix's trilling had hushed to a whisper, his brilliant eyes dimmed to a deeper blue. Even he seemed to be affected by the tranquility of the scene.

Not happiness so much as contentment. Simple and absolute, shared between two battered beings with mutual feelings towards one another that were just beginning to bloom. Tejed was too tired to do anything except accept it and be still.

In the death of the corrupted noble, Torvus came back to life. In the charred clearing, life hesitantly crept back into the light, tentative and fearful after what had transpired. After an infinite moment, like an old machine slowly starting again, the sounds started up. The soft pattering of rain on the water, the rustle of plant life at the very periphery of the clearing, and the gentle, soothing buzz of alien insects.

It was a scene of beauty that Tejed knew could not last forever. Nothing lasted forever. Not the Ing-corrupted Luminoth, nor the phazon that clouded her head, nor even the tender moment shared right now. Things end, and new things began. As the last of the parasite ebbed from her system she hesitantly straightened, leaving the warm embrace of her friend.

"We have to go," was all she said. There were yet still so many things to do. Get rid of the containment of phazon still aboard the ship. Find out if the other Luminoth had also fallen victim to Ing possession, or if this was just a disturbing anomaly. And hopefully go home sometime.

Eyes having dimmed back down to their usual yellow hue, she stretched, feeling her head pounding in the afermath of the poison. Cuts and bruises patterned her face and she could feel blood leaking into one her eyes. The pain had since melded together into one constant ache in every corner of her body and it made her feel sick, nauseous, eager to feel the soft caress of a bed followed by the sweet release of sleep.

Kayleer felt his gentle hold on her falter and slip as she pulled away. He felt her happiness give way to solemnity and concern, and he in turn followed. He opened his eyes and stood up slowly, becoming painfully aware of the situation. His aching, bleeding throat, Slix's deteriorating body atop his own, and the toxic blue mutagen that was slowly spreading its way through the bog. They needed to be dealt with.

His throat, he could manage. Though his breath was painful and rasping, he wasn't in immediate danger. He eyed his helmet and neck piece, crumpled and tossed to the side. They would need repairs. And Slix, barely still functioning and literally falling apart... Kayleer knelt down and gently took his damaged friend in his arms. Gears still turning, vents still pulsing faintly to keep his temperature down, all those tiny mechanical signs of life were faint, but they were there nonetheless. He held him in his arm and took another look at the environment.

How were they to quarantine the area and keep an explosive phazon infection from spreading through the planet of Aether once more? That immediately became the epitome of Kayleer's worries. How painful it was, to see his home violated by the toxic substance. Soon it would seep into the local bioforms, corrupting them into violent monsters, transmogrifying the peaceful habitat of Torvus into something twisted and unrecognizable. Kayleer looked piteously into the fouled waters before him.

His desperate anxiety was interrupted by a familiar sound.

A soulful resonance, the sound of freedom and happiness and good will all together in one lyrical tone. The voice of a true Luminoth. The bright-burgundy plumed visitor approached Kayleer and calmed the troubled pirate with his very presence. A tranquil aura seeped into the atmosphere and brought with it a pleasure that seemed to quash all negative feelings gained from what had transpired.

_"I had hoped we would never have to face this vile murrain again," _he spoke in a universal understanding that transcended vocal speech. _"But we are prepared."_He raised a hand in the air. manipulating the waning sunlight into a signal, one which the flighted technology he called forth immediately responded to. Three pods erupted from the mud of the bog and became airborne. They extended tiny, gently flaring rockets that carried them over the bog, letting lose virulent rays of golden light as they scanned over everything beneath them that had been putrified.

The Luminoth turned to look to Tejed and Kayleer. _"They will purge the poison, but in turn they will kill everything they touch."_ He closed his eyes, perhaps in silent mourning of all the natural life that would have to be lost in the process. His eyes remained closed and he placed a hand above his fine-pelted thorax in a shallow bow. _"It is good to see you again, my friend,"_he said. He opened his eyes and smiled at Kayleer.

For some reason Tejed felt the familiar wet warmth of tears grace her eyes, tears that burnt and pained like the corruption that had graced what had before been a peaceful clearing. It was as though the presence of an uncorrupted Luminoth left her soul bear and open, exposed for all the word to see. It made her feel as though the whole travesty that had conspired so quickly earlier was entirely her fault.

"It's my fault," she said quietly, averting her predator gaze to the ground. "If I hadn't come here with my _poison_, none of this would have happened."

The thought that by simply coming here, she had made everything worse was tearing at her heart. She felt that if she hadn't been so angry, she wouldn't have fallen for the possessed Luminoth's very obvious ploy, and the once beautiful track of swampland wouldn't have to be razed to the ground.

Wherever she went, the corruption followed. Nothing was safe.

The Luminoth looked to the sky before turning his eyes to Tejed. With a narrowed gaze he attempted to offer her an unseen aura of comfort. She was in distress, and it brought the Luminoth great sorrow to witness it.

Kayleer gave a respectful bow to his Luminoth comrade before speaking up to Tejed. "No," he retorted. "Without you, the Ing would have used its phazon to try to bring back the Dark World. That has to be why he stole it, why he came back to Aether," it had become clear to Kayleer what he had been planning, and he was immediately grateful that he had come. He shook his head, brushing off her self-blameful comments. "If anything, you _saved _Aether."

"I had sensed that a corrupted Luminoth had made planetfall. I was relieved when I felt the Ing presence fade, even if it took our friend wit

it." The resonant sound of his voice seemed to lift the haze of ill feelings from the air.

Kayleer nodded. He had so many questions to ask, so much catching up to do with the Luminoth he knew as A-Vei. But it would have to wait. They had greeted, that was enough for now, as his first priority was getting rid of the phazon-infested ship.

He turned to Tejed and gave her a serious look. "Any ideas on how to deal with that?" he said, gesturing his right arm in the direction of the ship. "Normally I might have Slix reprogram an automated course into Dasha, but he's a bit... out of commission right now," he trailed off, painfully aware of the damaged mechanoid in his arms.

She didn't know how, or why for that matter, but the moth like creature's head words seemed to make her feel less guilty, had infused into her mind in a curious way she couldn't quiet pinpoint. Tejed hadn't met many, if any, telepathic species in her travels, and empathetic ones were a whole different story.

All in all, she appreciated the kind creature's help in soothing her frazzled nerves. Whatever he had done, it had worked. She felt considerably calmer, almost human again. The phazon within her at this point had no hold.

"Any ideas on how to deal with that?"

Kayleer had motioned towards the now derelict hull of the stolen ship, glinting with rapidly dying radioactivity. Though the pods killed and purged the poison that had leaked into the ecosystem, they failed to have an effect on what waited unseen inside the ship, crackling malevolently in its glass and steel prison. And while Tejed could easily get in there and spill it, for the pods and their blinding golden light to eradicate, that would mean even more damage to Torvus.

It was completely out of the question.

"…I have an idea," she said after a moment, leaving the two so she could access her suit's communications by herself. It would be good for Kayleer, getting to see his adoptive people again, at least for a little longer. Out of earshot but still in the clearing, she got in touch with Jarvis, ordering him to send out a message to Gin. Hopefully he wasn't too too far away. If he were still on Earth it would take him hours to get here, and hours was something they didn't have.

They needed to do something about the phazon now, before something bad happened. Tejed didn't like to admit it, but seeing so much phazon all stocked in one place made her feel sick to the stomach, not because she hated it, but because deep down she loved it. She was scared that if it stayed there much longer she'd eventually break and end up consuming it all herself, going on a power binge.

She shuddered thinking about it.

But a moment later her radio crackled and she heard Gin's voice come through. He sounded annoyed and she suppressed a laugh.

"What do you want, Tejed?" was all he asked. Out here, she was reduced to speaking to him solely through sound, without seeing him on a screen.

"Can you get to Aether?" she asked, hopeful. "We need your help."

"…What did you do this time?"

"Oh pshaw, Gin!" she replied, mocking hurt tones. "You act like everything is always my fault!"

Silence, then, "That's because usually it is." Followed after a moment by, "I can be there in about fifteen minutes or so, I'm pretty close to Dasha. What happened?"

"You'll see when you get here," was all she said, before she terminated the connection and walked back to Kayleer.

"I got some help," she said, feeling hopeful about the whole situation. "He should be here pretty quick."

Kayleer wanted to ask who was coming, but he figured he would know in a short while anyways. The phazon would be dealt with, and that fact gave him relief. He merely nodded to Tejed.

A-Vei approached him, his tall, lean form hovering above his old friend as he observed the broken creature in Kayleer's arms. Kayleer felt his presence like a friendly warmth, and he knew his concern for his Slix was only dimming the Luminoth's aura.

He observed Slix, his expression turning pained as he saw just how bad of a condition he was in. Overloaded circuits, melted metal, broken bits of wire sparking nerves out into the humid air where there was nothing there to receive them.

A-Vei had helped to build the purging pods that were at work in the marsh. He had been Kayleer's fellow apprentice, working under master Luminoth engineers to learn the complex craft of machine-building. He offered a hand to take the damaged mechanoid out of Kayleer's hands, and he was met with complete trust and complacency. Kayleer gave him up willingly, knowing his old friend would return him good as new.

The Luminoth looked hopefully into the dim blue eyes of his new patient. _"He will be easily repaired," he told Kayleer. __"And I will be sure to tell the others of your return,"_ he continued, smiling. _"I look forward to seeing you in the Temple once more, once you have finished your work here."_His words had a serious tone in them that told Kayleer he understood the importance of disposing of the ship and its deadly contents. With that, he turned away and disappeared into the marsh.

Kayleer sighed. He realized how much he wanted to follow him, but he still had a job to do before he had the liberty to do anything for pleasure. He turned back to Tejed and waited for her assistant to arrive.

Tejed instructed Jarvis to send out a signal bound to her suit, so that Gin would have an easier time finding them. In the meantime all there was to do was stand and wait, patiently. The serious undertones of what they had to do made enjoying the quiet tranquility of Torvus nearly impossible, and now that the Luminoth had left them, Tejed felt the calming light of his mind slowly leave as well.

"How did you meet the Luminoth?" she asked suddenly, eager to break the silence. Speech, spoken words. They would help her remain sane while they waited for Gin to arrive, instead of standing in the silence of the bog. The rain didn't help at this point in time, neither did the life sounds from all around them.

"I mean, you already told me something," she continued. "But you never really… Elaborated."

The phazon was loud, despite its locked away state. It was because she knew it was there. Fidgeting, she awaited his response to fill the silence and banish the noise the corruption made in her head.

Kayleer was grateful for the breach in the silence, but talking about his past gave him a bit of anxiety.

"I was a slave here on Aether. Part of a pirate mining operation," he replied. "Phazon; they employed countless slaves to work to mine the stuff. It almost infected me. I stopped it," he clenched his metal fist and raised it in gesture. "By removing my arm." A brief moment of intangible pain flashed in his mind as he remembered the event.

Kayleer shook his head. "Pirate slave masters didn't care about us, not one bit," he shrugged. "A useless slave was a terminable one, so I continued to work.

"My brethen died periodically, from phazon madness and the resulting termination by superiors. Or they simply died of age; slaves usually live about a year or so. They're grown to be expendable," he said simply. "One day I had the luck of meeting one of Aether's native sentients, the Luminoth, down in the mines. She was merely scouting, investigating the extent of phazon growth on Aether. This was after the Ing war, but before the Luminoth succeeded in totally purging the stuff.

"She took me with her, back to the Torvus Temple. Said something about how despicable it was for sentient creatures to enslave others, and to be honest it was the first time I had ever considered that.

"Her mate was a geneticist, a master of bio-manipulation and synthetic creatures. He helped to create much of the biotech during the war. He offered to change me, make me less of a slave and more like one of them. Back then I had a hard time understanding what he meant, what he was offering me, but I agreed anyways.

"Gave me a new arm, an expanded mind, and a lifespan more similar to theirs. To this day I _still_don't understand how," Kayleer laughed. "But I've been alive for over twenty years now, and I still feel young." He looked to the sky, merely in wonder. His body was young and healthy even though he had lived over tenfold what it was originally meant to. The staggering difference between his life as a slave and the second life the Luminoth had given him made him grateful just to be alive.

"I… I didn't know pirates could be so cruel to their own kind," Tejed said after a moment, his story resonating with her. "I mean, I knew they could be cruel, no offence, but not to their own."

It perturbed her, to know that Kayleer had originally begun his life as a slave, of all things. Despite having spent a year onboard one of their vessels, living day after day through the agony they had exposed her to, it had never crossed her mind that pirates would harm their own. And why would it? With the corruption being forced into her, she had learned to hate, and nothing else had mattered.

She shuddered, having inadvertently remembered the past. Feeling socially awkward, especially around so alien a creature, she didn't know whether to hug him or just stand to the side, away. Kayleer seemed to get confused and fidgety when she got too near him. He valued his personal space highly. So she opted on standing to the side and sharing the pain quietly.

A moment later, the flash came in the sky. The flash of a vessel entering Aether's atmosphere, its hull burning on entry. It's shape was familiar: smooth and sleek, painted black and with no logos or patterns to break the colour. It contrasted Tejed's ship sharply. Where her's was composed of points and blocks and gave off a very unfriendly vibe, Gin's felt more modern and smooth, welcoming despite its dark colouration.

She motioned Kayleer back and stood in the clearing so that she was the only one visible, directing the ship to land as it came ever closer. With a hiss and a clank it made planetfall, sinking into the soft mire mud and throwing up a cloud of water that vapourized the moment it came into contact with the hot hull.

Tejed smiled wide and approached his ship as the doors opened, the ship having already cooled considerably in the cold environment. When Gin invariably walked out he looked just as annoyed as she thought he would, his tired eyes glaring at her sullenly.

"Okay, I'm here," he announced, spreading his arms as though showing just how irritated he was. "What do you want?"

She pointed over to the derelict vessel, immune to his frustrations.

"We need to get that ship into the sun, and I don't do computers. Help?"

She smiled at him hopefully and he just rolled his eyes, surveying the scene.

"We?" he asked after a moment, still staring at the ship. It looked familiar, probably Federation. While it had no physical indicators of origin, Gin was sure of his abilities when computers came into the equation, alien or not. He sighed and looked back at Tejed.

"Yeah, we," she replied, unfazed. "Kayleer's with me."

She pointed over her shoulder at the pirate waiting patiently behind her and Gin's face instantly contorted not into anger but resentment. Simmering, hateful resentment.


	3. Part 3

Kayleer flinched at the human's clear, unconditional hostility towards him. He returned his hateful stare with an unfazed and understanding expression. He was used to this sort of treatment.

Usually he would wear his helmet when around humans, just to prevent such interactions. But this was not an option since it had been torn off and put into an inoperable condition- at least until Slix returned and could repair it.

Knowing the human was Tejed's help, he allowed him some leeway. Besides, a pirate whose presence was unexplained would have made most people uncomfortable. Aiming to prove his difference, Kayleer approached the visitor and offered a hand. He knew human custom well, and this was a respectful greeting that he hoped would help ease the tension.

"Nice to meet you."

Nonplussed, Gin accepted the outstretched hand, his expression dour. No words were spoken, only cool calm hatred. The steel of his mechanical hand clinked against Kayleer's matching prosthetic and when he withdrew from the shake there was no change in emotion. Beside him Tejed looked guilty, her large ears hanging down in a display of negative emotion. She had forgotten how much resentment Gin harboured towards space pirates.

Tenderly she put a hand on his shoulder in an effort to gain his attention. The negativity hanging hostile in the air was putting a severe damper on her mood.

"So, uh. About the ship…?" she asked, hoping to divert him to something else. He blinked once, his brilliant blue eyes icy and cold, and finally turned away from Kayleer, putting up a wall so that he could pretend the pirate did not exist, despite the friendly greeting he had been offered. Tejed flashed Kayleer an apologetic smile before leading Gin towards the vessel and the vile corruption that it was holding.

Kayleer could feel the hatred emanating from the human and he backed away in discomfort. He kept a distance merely to avoid feeling the negative aura. He was used to hatred from humans but something about this one was notably more intense.

Kayleer glanced at Tejed and shook his head. "I'm ... Kayleer," he said, knowing his back was turned, knowing he was ignored. It didn't matter. As long as the human was here to rid Aether of the phazon-infested vessel he didn't care what treatment he got.

Gin heard but he made no indication, instead set his mind to the task at hand.

"Why do you want to send this into the sun?" he asked, pointing to the vessel. It had started to sink into the soft mud, little by little. There was no outward signs that the ship posed any sort of danger, and Gin was confused. And irked. He didn't like being called out so far on a whim, especially when he knew how unstable Tejed could easily be.

Without saying anything she motioned for him to follow and started to lead him into the ship, stopping when she noticed that Kayleer was standing hesitantly outside. Curious she cocked her head to the side.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked. Gin peered in, saw the phazon, and looked back, laughing.

"What are you, scared?" he mocked, a hint of malevolence in his voice despite his usual calm attitude. "Big ugly pirate like you, scared of a little phazon."

Suddenly very annoyed Tejed took the opportunity to elbow him in the ribs, shooting him a glare in the process and ignoring the undignified scowl he shot back in return. Leaving Gin to his duties she walked out and put a gentle hand on Kayleer's shoulder, hoping that she could urge him to come in, too. It seemed very wrong to leave him out here, by himself.

"Come on," she coaxed, voice gentle. "I promise Mr. Pissypants is just grouchy because I called him from whatever the fuck he was doing, that's it."

"Mr. Pissypants?" Kayleer gave Tejed a quizzical expression. It was a strange name for a human and he felt awkward sounding it out through his translator.

His gaze turned back to the ship and the phazon aboard it, and he shivered in disgust. Surrounding himself with the stuff, willingly? Even in containers the foul mutagen aroused a terror in his mind that he feared he would struggle to control.

Tejed seemed in control of herself despite the proximity to the phazon, and for the moment he decided to swallow his fear and follow. Reluctantly, he stepped aboard the ship with Tejed as she led him to catch up with her friend. Doing his best to ignore the vile luminescence around him, he swallowed his fear and caught up to Tejed's friend, attempting once more to break the tension.

"Your name is... Mr. Pissypants, was it?" He inquired, completely ignorant. "I am Kayleer," he attempted once more to get past the spite and make proper introductions.

Gin looked up quick, his brow furrowing in confusion, and despite herself Tejed had burst into raucous laughter. For a moment Gin was caught completely off guard and wasn't sure if he should feel angry or embarrassed or what.

"You actually called him that!" Tejed yelled, beside herself with amusement. "I can't believe you actually called him that!"

Her laughter was loud, echoing easily around the confined space of the ship, and Gin was just flat out confused. He remained silent as Tejed wiped a tear from her face.

"Look at your face, Gin," she said, trying not to die from laughter. "You look so ridiculous and confused oh my god it's _adorable." _

She allowed herself a moment to calm down but it wasn't happening. Something about it was just ludicrously hilarious as far as she was concerned and it had her in hysterics. Not impressed in the slightest, Gin rolled his eyes and went back to work, tinkering with the ship's computer systems.

"Bloody crazy," he muttered. "Everyone around me is bloody crazy."

Kayleer felt just as confused as Tejed's human friend and he looked at her in question. "What the hell did I say?" he asked. Between her laughter and the other human's habit of ignoring him, he was thoroughly frustrated.

Gin was good at blocking out things that annoyed him. Keeping his mind locked on the task at hand, he continued to fiddle with the computer, trying to get the ship up and running again. He was very sure of himself, and he knew he could do it. It could take a long while, or it could happen without a hitch in the next five seconds. He learned long ago that computers often had minds of their own.

Tejed's loud laughter slowly faded and she calmed down, the hilarity of it finally fading from her mind. It was the close proximity to the phazon, she realized. It was starting to mess up her thought processes, making her erratic in subtle, non-assuming ways.

"What the hell did I say?" Kayleer asked, starting to sound just as frustrated as Gin usually felt.

"My name is Gin," Gin replied, breaking his own rule and speaking to the pirate. He wanted to diffuse Tejed's meddling before it became a problem. And the pirate seemed to mean well, so he didn't see the harm in speaking to it, despite the hatred he felt. A pirate had stolen his arm, after all. Gin wasn't about to forget that so easily, regardless if Kayleer had anything to do with it or not.

Tejed, still smiling, perched herself on a crate and just watched.

"I see..." Kayleer glanced annoyingly at Tejed. "Idiot," he said under his breath. He realized now what she had called him was a derogatory nickname, and he instantly regretted saying it. He was only making himself look worse. He sighed, turning to Gin, who still refused to look at him.

"Gin, then. Your prejudice is based in ignorance," he began, perhaps being too bold. But he was used to the stereotyping and used to being hated. His goal now was to break that hatred down, even if it required a condescending push to begin with. "Why do you hate me?"

Startled Gin finally turned around and looked the pirate straight in the eyes, flabbergasted by its question.

"Why do _I_ hate _you?"_he repeated, incredulous, as though the question had such a clear answer and everyone should know it. He raised his mechanical arm into the air, pointing it at Kayleer. The prosthetic whined and jittered in protest, as though it was in need of repair work.

"_You_ took my arm," he said simply, referring to Kayleer not as an individual but as part of a whole. "_You_ took my home, and _you_took her humanity." He pointed at Tejed for emphasis and she suddenly became very quiet.

"_You_are nothing more than a monster, and I don't want to get to know you. Ever."

Silent he turned back to his work, having already cracked into the system and working now on setting a trajectory to Dasha. In the eerie blue glow of the phazon that leaked through, there was nothing but cold silence.

Kayleer's expression turned to one of spite and he immediately spat back. "Well by _that_ logic, _you_ killed over six million people, _you_ enslaved those of a different skin color than yourself, and _you_deliberately infected indigenous humans with disease because you wanted their land," he said, mockingly accusatory. Kayleer knew much of human history, enough to know the terrible, and the good, that humans in the past had done.

Mindlessly blaming Kayleer for everything his people had done wrong was sickeningly racist and he responded in satire with the same logical fallacies that Gin had. Maybe it would give him the ability of self-reflection.

"I am _not_my entire race."

Gin didn't say anything. His hands came to a pause for a moment, hovering over the alien keys of the ship. This pirate spoke too much truth for him to blatantly ignore simply because of the species he had been born as. A moment later, he clicked a key, set a course. Stood and turned around as the vessel powered up.

"Come on," he said, walking past both Kayleer and Tejed, motioning them outside, away from the corruption. He still felt anger, of course. But it had been dampened by a reality he wasn't sure he wanted to face. Outside they stood together, the rain cold as the ship started to raise, slowly, into the air.

The yellow of Dasha hung high in the sky, ready to incinerate the ship and its poisonous contents. Finally Gin allowed himself to look at Kayleer, and all he did was stare.

Kayleer found himself so intrigued by the change in Gin's demeanour that he almost managed to ignore the pulsing phazon that lined the ship as they exited.

His words seemed to have struck a cord in the spiteful human, and he couldn't blame him. Gin had probably never met a pirate with the need, nor the lingual ability for that matter, to rebuke his hatred.

When the trio finally reached the bog, Gin gave Kayleer a blank, contemplative look, as though he was for the first time appreciating the sentient being behind that menacing countenance. He was silent, and Kayleer realized that once more, he'd have to be the one to speak up first.

"Finally learned to stomach the sight of me? I guess that's a step forward."

Gin did nothing but stare for the longest time, his brain seemingly unable to comprehend what he was witnessing. As far as he was concerned, pirates were mindless monstrosities incapable of any feeling, let alone the level of intelligence and free will Kayleer was displaying. Tejed was standing in the middle, unsure who to be with. On one hand she wanted to stand beside Kayleer and protect him, be with him, for he had shown her so much kindness in so short a time. But on the other she wanted to be near Gin, for he had been her closest friend since she was young, and she looked to him like family.

In the end she found herself stuck in the middle, unsure. Even as the ship left, destined for the great sun Dasha, and the parasitic link of the phazon went with it, she remained confused and in the center.

"…my name is Gin," Gin said after a moment, stepping forward with his hand extended. It sounded as though speaking to the pirate in a friendly manner was difficult for him. "Gin Phoenix. And you are…?"

He awaited a response, and though he spoke with military precision and lack of emotion, Tejed could hear the acceptance in his voice, however faint.

Though the two had already exchanged names once before, Kayleer realized this time it was symbolic. Names were not important. What was important was the acceptance that Kayleer was finally, deserving, able to receive, and it made him glad.

He happily took Gin's hand in his own prosthetic, without any air of vengeance about him.

"I'm Kayleer," he repeated, and this time he knew he was heard.

Gin had always prided himself in having an accepting mind, so when he realized how he had generalized an individual by judging him as he did the rest of his species, it almost made him feel sick to his stomach. He smiled, looking Kayleer in the eye. Here was a creature, no a person, that deserved respect, and he wasn't going to deny him that.

"Good to meet you, Kayleer," Gin acknowledged with a curt nod of the head. Without warning Tejed scooped them both into a huge hug, her arms long enough to easily accommodate them both. There was happiness, finally, between the two people she had grown to love.

"You're both friends now!" she exclaimed happily, squishing them both together whether they liked it or not.

Kayleer's expression turned from one of peaceful conclusion to one of complete and total surprise. His eyes widened as he was pulled in and pressed against Tejed's armored chest, his face hovering inches from Gin's. He could only imagine he was not the only one of the two feeling discomfort.

Despite his indisputable objection to having his personal space violated once again, he managed to accept it. She was right, after all, at least somewhat. Whatever hostility Gin had once inherently held for him was gone, and they should both be grateful for that.

After a moment he pulled away, snorting in annoyance, shaking his head. The separation was almost as awkward as the hug itself, but the feeling was fleeting. Kayleer didn't have a chance to voice his frustration when he heard a familiar trilling come from the edge of the bog. He turned to see the welcoming blue eyes of his mechanical creation, good as new and quite excited to reclaim his favorite resting spot.

Several splashes of mud and water later, Slix had bounded up to Kayleer's shoulder and circled around his neck twice before settling. Kayleer laughed; what a welcome tension breaker he was. A-Vei had certainly retained his skills since he had left, and Kayleer admired the repair work. Slix looked in even better condition than he had been before, and one could never tell that mere hours ago, he had been ready for the scrap yard.

So many happy feelings. Not only had Gin and Kayleer become begrudging friends, but Slix had returned as good as new, his blue eyes cutting through the haze of the bog like bright headlights. The effect was almost instantaneous: Kayleer seemed to instantly brighten at the sight of his old friend and Gin's eyes grew wide, the engineer in him instantly curious.

Slix's trilling grew in intensity and he wrapped himself around Kayleer's neck, the pirate giving a genuine laugh at the feel of his friend wrapping around his shoulders and neck. The sight made Tejed very happy, indeed, to see Kayleer happy and Gin as well.

"What is it?" asked Gin, his mind taken by curiousity and everything else forgotten. He reached out a tentative hand, unsure if he was allowed to touch Slix, awaiting Kayleer's approval. Or disapproval.

"Him," Kayleer corrected. He nodded to Slix and smiled, watching as his mechanical companion writhed his way up the human's arm and onto his head.

Gin was like a kid in a candy store. Or rather, an engineer with a sophisticated piece of technology he had never seen before. Delighted he let Slix crawl on his head, suppressing the urge to giggle like a little school girl. He had done a complete transformation from annoyed to enthralled, simply by seeing Slix.

"Did you make him?" he asked excitedly, looking at Kayleer than back at Slix. Slix slithered down his mechanical arm, poking around at the nooks and crannies of his prosthesis with nimble little fingers. Gin was overjoyed.

"The machinery is fantastic!" he exclaimed. "So many beautiful gears and pistons and…"

He trailed off, describing pieces of machinery that Tejed couldn't understand, for her mind was not wired the same way his was. She was just happy to see him happy, instead of irritated like he always was when he saw her these days.

Kayleer nodded pridefully. Without realizing it he found himself laughing at the plain mundanity of the scene. The bog was purged of phazon and he had won the heart of a once hateful human with his mechanical creation. He left Slix to his playful inspection and found to ease to literally fall down in the mud. His armor retracted and he sat there, eyes closed, mind seeming to wander. For the first time in a while he had nothing to be anxious about.

The scene was far too comfortable to last long. Nothing ever lasted too long, Tejed knew. When things got too comfortable, bad things always came to break them. It was the unwritten law of the universe. Or, at least, her personal universe.

"Why did the Federation have phazon?" she blurted, startling everyone. Kayleer looked up from the mud, seemingly surprised, and both Gin and Slix paused in their antics to look over at her. The one question had been overlooked in the simple happiness that the planet Aether had brought them. Trouble, Tejed looked back to her ship, then Gin's.

"They have to have a reason," she said quietly, now that she had everyone's attention. "What are they trying to do?"

Kayleer jerked back to reality and gave Tejed a pained look.

"I wouldn't know," he sighed. "Probably the usual crap, weapons of mass destruction, bioweapons..." He shook his head. There was no excuse- none, for possessing the stuff. "Whatever it is, I have no reason not to desert," he finished, disgusted. He had joined the Federation, left his homeworld, because he felt it was his duty to actively fight the space pirates, stopping their conquest from spreading into the planets under the Federation and beyond. But using Phazon... in Kayleer's mind it made the human-run body no better than his own species, and he was more than willing to give up that pitiful concept of duty and merely return home, here, to Torvus.

Gin was already halfway to his ship, Slix having joined his master once more. Each step was rage, each movement, fury.

"They have no right," he seethed, stopping at the bay doors and turning the glare at them. "They have no right using that _poison_to do the same thing they're trying to stop. NO RIGHT."

He was filled with righteous indignation, a peculiar sort of hatred that he had once felt for Kayleer and his species, now redirected back at the very people he had worked for for so very long.

"They're no better off than monsters," he continued, unabated. "If we don't do something then the horror will _never end._You should know that first and foremost, Tejed."

Tejed flinched at the raw emotions in his words. She should know that horror first and foremost, and she did. It pained to remember, hurt to think about. And if the Federation was doing the same things the pirates were, then Gin was right. They were no better off than monsters, each and every one of them that allowed the travesty to exist.

Tentative she turned to Kayleer, pain in her eyes. She didn't want anyone else to experience the insanity of phazon like she did.

"Are you with us?" she asked quietly.

Kayleer bent his legs and pulled them up against his chest, holding them in with his arms. He tucked his head into the resulting crawl space and closed his eyes. He didn't want to be involved. He didn't want to be a part of anything that had to do with phazon. Why should he risk it? Why not take the stance his adopted people had taken and opt not to interfere with warring species? He could do it, he knew it easily. No one would come after him if he deserted the Federation and returned home to Aether. It was neutral space- he couldn't be chased here. In his mind he went over all the slothly possibilities, feeling his mind edge ever closer to the complacent act of ignorance. Ignore the Federation's heinous phazon projects, ignore the conquest-driven pirates. Ignore Tejed...

The last thought struck a chord with him and he rose his head out of the darkness. Slix trilled quietly, circling around the sodden pit Kayleer's feet had imprinted for him.

Kayleer thought of A-Vei, and how inviting it seemed to return to Torvus Temple and see everyone again. But he remembered the Luminoth's thoughts, how he had told him he should return once he had finished with his duties. He wasn't finished. Not until every last droplet of the foul blue mutagen was purged from this galaxy.

He felt conflicted. He gave her a sullen expression with his four, soulful eyes that told her he reluctantly agreed. His expression told her that he would go anywhere with her, but also that he felt resentment for having to leave Aether once more. He said nothing. There was more than just the duty to stop the Federation's production of phazon driving him to join her.

Quietly Tejed kneeled down, resting her forehead against his one more in that special way that made her feel so happy. She could feel the sorrow emanating from him. Finally, Kayleer was home. And he was being torn away again by the one thing that gave him the most fear.

"I'll be with you," she said softly, sharing her optimism. "I won't let any of it get you. If anything goes wrong, I'll take the brunt of it. For you."

She spoke the truth. Though she had only known him for a couple of days at most, she already felt far closer to this creature than anyone else. He had shown her kindness, acceptance. Though she wasn't sure if love factored into any of this, she didn't care. Not right now, anyway.

Gently she rose to her full height and offered her hand.

Kayleer sighed. He shook her away and gave her a mocking smile that suggested his doubt. He felt comforted by her words and yet he knew there was likely nothing she could do to protect him. Not if phazon was involved. If anything, he'd end up pinned down and choked, or possibly slashed at. Who knew how rare it was that Tejed could control herself while in that state. How many times would a desperately pathetic plea for his life work to snap her out of it?

First and foremost would be confronting the Federation about the incident. He already knew what would happen; they would deny it. After all, what proof did they have? They had sent their proof into the inferno of Dasha. It was a conspiracy, one they had uncovered and now had no way to expose.

Where did the Ing get the information he needed to track the stuff down? Surely it wasn't impossible, if he had been able to do it. Was there something the Ing, or the Luminoth it possessed, had that made it happen?

So many questions, and considering the topic it was frightful to even think about them. Every fibre of his being was against helping, against ever leaving Aether again. But if there was one thing in Kayleer that was stronger than his fear it was his stubborn sense of resolve.

"How would we even start?" he asked. "Confronting the Federation about it would just lead to denial, and we have no way of knowing where the rest of their phazon stores are," he paused, thinking. "Tch, maybe we should have kept the Ing alive for questioning..."

"…You're right," Gin said, feeling very disturbed about the whole situation. By now the illegal cargo on the illicit ship had already been vaporized in the searing plasma of Dasha, and as much as he wanted to straight up storm Federation HQ, he knew how badly that would end. This pirate had far too much sense about him, and for a moment Gin felt a pang of pity. It was far too obvious that Kayleer didn't want to go, but he was forcing himself anyhow. An admirable trait, in any person.

Gin Phoenix had lots of contacts, on Earth and other planets. He could try to find relevant information, but the chances of stumbling upon something as big as a galactic conspiracy were small, indeed. That said, questioning wouldn't hurt. Unless he asked the wrong questions. But then Gin wasn't still alive after everything he had been through purely because of luck.

"I have contacts," he said simply. "I can go back to Earth and ask around."

Quietly he awaited an answer, staring first and Kayleer then at Tejed, only now realizing with a sudden shock how close they were. They stood close together and when they looked at each other there was something there that hinted at more than just friendship. Something had happened between them in their short time together, he imagined. But he didn't say anything.

"What would earthlings know about what's happening?" Kayleer responded harshly. What was going on was far from the planet, and he doubted the reliance of Gin's so-called 'contacts'. Then again he doubted the likelihood that they would find _anyone_with information.

"Antares..." he continued. "Originally the Ing was spotted in the Antares system. Maybe there is something of relevance there," Kayleer suggested. "Did the Federation give you any useful information when they described your bounty? Obviously your employers knew _what_was stolen."

Gin suppressed the influx of anger that flooded his mind and bit his tongue, in no mood to argue with Kayleer at this point in time.

"My contacts know more than you think," he muttered, ego momentarily bruised by the pirate's brash language. Feeling very vulnerable with the onset of raised tempers, Tejed took a moment to find her voice.

"I.." she started, trailing off when both of them turned to look at her. "Well that is. They never told me _anything_when they gave me my mission. They were… They were purposely vague."

Gin allowed his face to meet his palm and gave in to a heavy sigh before turning his attention momentarily to his ship. Gin knew the capabilities of his ship. It was much faster and smaller than Tejed's, though it lacked her firepower. Tejed seemed to understand wordlessly what he was thinking and quickly accessed her suit's communication's relay, instructing Jarvis to take her ship, unmanned, back to Earth. It would be better if that all stuck together at this point in time, instead of splitting up and making themselves far more susceptible.

"To Antares then?" Tejed asked quietly, looking at Kayleer first, then to Gin. He nodded once and entered his ship, and Tejed made to follow.

Kayleer sighed. He was beginning to tire of how complacent he was as of late. He simply nodded and rose from the mud. He was tired of fighting, tired of being afraid, tired of dealing with phazon and all the terrible things it left in its wake. Tejed, he supposed, was one of those things, and yet she had the power to single-handedly drive him into doing everything he hated. He shot a smirk in her direction before walking aboard Gin's ship.

Slix ran into the marsh and fetched Kayleer's neck piece and helmet; he was way behind on repair work, and this demanded the most attention. With the damaged armour securely in his front pedes, he rushed bipedal and awkward onto the ship as well.

The doors came to a silent close and Gin made his way resolutely to the pilot deck, Tejed close behind.

"How long will it take us to get to Antares?" she asked quietly. In the soft silence of the ship, her broken voice was loud, and it made her flinch.

"An hour or so," was his curt response, before he gave her a sideways glance, spying Kayleer behind them, out of earshot. "So why do you like him?" he asked quietly. Tejed was, for a moment, surprised.

"What?" she replied quietly, glancing back too. She felt the warmth of an embarrassed blush spread across her face and suddenly couldn't formulate words. Instead she turned her gaze to the ground, unable to meet Gin's eyes. He didn't seem to notice as they walked into the pilot bay.

"He's so brash," he continued, single mindedly. "I mean, I know you're a… Well, _experiment,_but him?"

He shook his head and settled into the pilot chair, already setting in a course for Antares.

"He's not brash," Tejed stated, putting a claw on the back of his chair and feeling defensive. "He's just… Well…" She stopped to think for a moment, not noticing Kayleer enter the room behind them. "A wussy."

_A wussy?_Kayleer snorted. "Nice to know what you think of me," he said condescendingly.

Her description wasn't unique. Once humans got to know him they called him such things purely because he was so out of character for a pirate. Where pirates were mindless, violent, and prone to anger he was calm, collected, and for the most part pacifistic. It was the nature the Luminoth had given to him and he did not reject it in the slightest.

"I was raised by 'wussies' so I guess it's only natural I became one too," he continued. "Better than the alternative, anyhow."

Tejed looked up like a deer caught in a pair of headlights and stared, as though she had been caught doing something wrong.

"No I mean I-"

Once again she found herself at a complete loss for words, and where she felt decidedly guilty about saying such a thing, Gin was trying his best not to laugh at the term she had used and the patronizing way Kayleer was speaking to her.

After a moment she allowed her armour to retract, glad to finally get out of the stifling closeness of her suit, and smiled apologetically at Kayleer in the hopes that he would forgive her.

"Sorry."

"It's fine," he replied simply. And it was true. Kayleer knew that insults had no weight. Insults didn't change who or what he was and acting like they did would only serve to increase the tension in the confined space of the ship.

Right now Kayleer just wanted to remain silent and focused until they arrived in the Antares system. He was grateful for every extra moment he was allowed to have before he had to deal with Phazon once more.

So, quietly, he left the two humans to catch up and went elsewhere in the ship to be alone.

Slix turned to watch him leave before quickly turning back to his repair work. Moving himself with the helmet and armor was too much of a chore so he opted to remain in the pilot deck until the work was finished.

In the brief, awkward silence that followed Kayleer's departure, all that could be heard was the steady hum of a blowtorch at work.

Glumly, Tejed slumped down over the back of Gin's chair, her arms on either side of his head and her face beside his. She was far too tired for her own good and Gin could see it. In her eyes and her posture and on every exhausted sigh. He hazarded a sideways glance at her, worried.

"You should get some sleep," he said quietly. The blowtorch hum of Slix's work played like soothing music and she could feel her eyelids drooping in the comforting warmth of Gin's ship. She muttered something wearily under her breath, her words unintelligible.

"What happened?" he asked again, concerned for her welfare despite the show of annoyance he tended to put on around her. "I've never seen you so tired… When's the last time you got some sleep?"

"Three days ago," was her response. Gin's brows furrowed in apprehension. He knew she could get by on less sleep than the average person, but three days was stretching it. Silent, he put his ship on autopilot, gave up manual control to his computer, and turned to look at her.

"What happened?"

This time his voice was serious, concerned.

"Phazon," she replied, eyes closed. "I… Got into the phazon, on the ship." She shuddered just remembering it. "Hyper mode came quick and I…"

"…Almost killed him?"

A shaky nod, as though the memory was painful, followed by an expression of distress. Gently Gin laid a hand on her shoulder in comfort. He had seen her go into hyper mode before, and now her fatigue made sense. Without a word he slipped from the chair and took hold of her arm, pulling her from her lethargic perch on his chair.

"Come on," he instructed. "You need sleep, now. Antares can wait."

"But I-"

"-Antares can wait."

Reluctant she followed him to a small bedroom, her mechanical legs dragging on the metal grills of the floor. The sight of the bed made her suddenly realize just how tired she was, and without any hesitation she flopped face first into the bed before curling into a loose fetal position. Gin smiled and left, the door closing behind him.

She needed sleep, and the rest would do her well.

Kayleer had retreated into one of the empty cargo bays of the ship.

It was quiet, empty, void of noise and danger and distraction. At this point it was all Kayleer wanted, short of staying home.

He sighed, lifted a claw to his aching throat. He had almost died. Worse, he had almost been infected by phazon, this time irreversibly. Kayleer shook his head. _Almost, almost...One of these days my luck is going to run out._

Kayleer let himself fall softly down to the deck of the cargo bay. He wondered what Tejed and her human friend were doing, what insults were exchanged between them about the cowardly pirate aboard with them.

He was thinking too much, he realized. A bad habit, and one that gave him unnecessary anxiety. So he folded his legs into an orderly position and closed his eyes, trying to dampen the negative feelings with a cleared mind.

In his silence, void of thought, he was oblivious when Gin entered the room.

Silent Gin had entered, and silent the expanse of his cargo bay remained. He hadn't expected to find Kayleer down here. Truth be told he was only interested in doing a check up on his cargo, make sure everything was still in place. It was his own little ritual, his way of doing things. Go through each room once to make sure, starting with the cargo bay and ending back at the pilot deck.

But everything was in order despite Kayleer's oblivious presence, and for a moment, Gin allowed himself merely to watch.

Kayleer was a mystery to him and Gin was intensely curious, despite the amount of blind hatred he had shown him earlier. Never before had the man seen a pirate such as him. He wondered what had caused Kayleer to become aware of his predicament, of his place in pirate society. As far as he knew, pirates did not condone the emotions that Kayleer so rampantly showed: kindness, compassion, rationality. Kayleer was an enigma, and Gin wanted to know why.

So he stood and watched for a moment, as the pirate seemed to zone out into a trance-like state comparable but not exactly akin to sleep. Meditating, that's what he was doing, Gin realized. He was meditating.

"Hey," he said quietly, hoping he could get some conversation going with Kayleer.

Kayleer opened his eyes. How much time had expired? He didn't know. Regardless, he was peeved at the interrupted silence, but whatever he felt, he decided not to show it. He slouched his position and looked to his intruder.

Gin. That judgemental human whose matching prosthetic so eerily mirrored that of Kayleer's. He would have preferred to be interrupted by Tejed, but she was nowhere to be seen. It was just the two of them, alone, in the quiet, cluttered silence of the cargo bay.

"What do you want?"

Gin just shrugged, this time not annoyed by the pirate's annoyed tones.

"I'm just curious," he replied back. "You… Obviously don't want to come. Why did you?"

Kayleer paused, unsure for a moment himself. Why did he come? In all honesty it was because Tejed had asked him, but, what about her was so forceful?

"Because she asked me to. She's a citizen, she was a victim. I have a duty to her and everyone else affected by the crimes of my species," he said simply. "And by the plague they brought to the knowledge of the Federation."

Gin entertained the idea of sitting beside Kayleer but quickly scrapped it. The pirate probably wouldn't appreciate his personal space invaded by someone he barely knew, anyhow. Gin knew _he _wouldn't.

"Do you like her?"

The question hung in the air. Love had a peculiar way of making rational minds do its irrational bidding, even while it itself remained unseen. Gin had seen some sort of spark between them but it had been faint, at the time. He understood and agreed with Kayleer's response, but he wanted to dig deeper.

Kayleer snorted in amusement.

"'Do you like her?'" he quoted. "What, are you a 12-year-old human female?" An absurd question, really, moreover for the way in which it was asked. "I find myself caring about her safety. That is all."

Gin shrugged.

"I was just curious."

He thought about leaving, looked back up the stairs he had come down. Something about Kayleer's words seemed defensive, or maybe he was hearing things. Either way, where he would have left, instead he stayed in place, and stared. He thought about asking about Kayleer's origins, but that seemed like too out of place a question.

Instead he found himself at a complete loss for words, unsure if he should go back up or stay here. So he stood in place, confused.

Kayleer did not know what else to make of what he was feeling besides that he simply valued Tejed's safety more than he did a typical friend. So that was all he divulged to the prying human at the door.

Gin's presence annoyed him because of the faint remnants of resentment he still felt from him, and now because of the rather personal question he had asked him. Sadly it seemed as though Gin was going to remain, curiously observing Kayleer as though he was some animal on display.

Kayleer didn't object. Once again he was complacent, so long as Gin kept his distance. Without another word he resumed his previous stance and closed his eyes, trying to block out the distracting presence of the human.

With nothing else to do and enough sense in his mind to know when to leave someone alone, Gin turned and left to pirate to his privacy, ascending the stairs up and out of the cargo bay. Everything was in order, everything was in place. Now it was time to take up his vigil in the pilot deck and wait until they arrived at Antares.

"Which will be in about… 45 minutes or so," he said to himself with a sigh. Passing the room Tejed had passed out in, he slowed down and peaked in. She was fast asleep, snoring soundly in the comfort of the dark. He smiled and left her to her dreams, hoping they weren't the nightmares she was so prone to.

In the quiet all was still. Something skittered off in the dark, but he paid it no heed as he took up his seat in the pilot bay. In time, they would get to Antares. In time.

He closed his eyes as well, and allowed himself the small comfort of sleep.

Slix looked up from his work. The human had returned, passed by him as though he hadn't noticed he was there, and taken a seat in the pilot's chair. Slix could see he was no longer conscious.

He returned his attention to his work. The cracks were fixed, the circuitry mended, and the armour was ready for reintegration. Proudly, he picked up the armour set and set off to find Kayleer. Slix made his way to the lower cargo bay, following the tracking signal.

In the airducts it tended to lurk the most, following the sounds of the ship's inhabitants. It had sentience, to a degree. It knew what it was and how it came into being, and it understood most spoken languages. It saw through a small camera attached to the flat of its palm and it skittered itself along on five fingers. It really only had one prerogative in its sporadic life: to survive. And survive is what it did best.

But there were newcomers this day. Entities it had never seen before, and one in particular caught its attention the most: the small metal creature it had overheard the tall ones regard as 'Slix'. Carefully, the mechanical contrivance skittered along the wall, clinging easily to the steel serrations set therein. It crawled, and it watched.

It saw Slix run down into the lower hold, carrying the armour set he had been so diligently working on, and curious, it followed as well, keeping just out of sight.

Slix hesitated for a moment, turning his steely helm to and fro. His keen audio receptors had picked up something strange, something not a usual part of the hims and hums of ship goings on.

He looked upward, and kept his gaze locked on. The roof, the concealing habitat of the vents- that was where the noise had come from. Slix stayed, motionless, head to the far above ship ceiling, waiting.

The hand froze and stared back down, unsure if the creature 'Slix' saw it or not. Carefully it sidled down the wall, its movements quiet and smooth despite the obvious wear and tear of its mechanical joints. It kept itself in the shadows so as not to raise attention, but it seemed as though its mechanical quarry knew it was there either way.

The iris in its palm opened, closed. Surveyed the scene. Calculated and thought. Decided.

Silently it let go of the wall. It just up and released its grip, and fell. Conveniently onto the back of Slix, where it tightened its grasp. Not to attack, oh no. The hand never attacked. It wanted to play. It felt mischievous. Never before had there been another mechanical life form around the same size as it. Today was the hand's lucky day, it would seem.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Slix had always been the timid type. It was how he was made. To avoid unnecessary damage to the pacifistically-purposed mechanoid, Kayleer had made him prone to fleeing from any perceived threat. So when the tiny bot was faced with something gripping, foreign, and uncontrolled directly on his back, he immediately set to running about frantically, letting loose a loud series of shrill cries.

Kayleer was the first to react, snapping out of his trance and rushing to the source of the sound. It was Slix' alarm call, one usually raised in response to an attack. Knowing that, Kayleer instinctively activated his incomplete armor before arriving at the scene.

Upon discovering what had caused Slix to raise his alarm, his expression changed from one of concern and fear to one of bemused confusion.

Gin snapped awake, having barely fallen asleep as it was. The sound was sudden, shrill, and ear piercing. Quick as a flash he stood and rushed out of the room towards the source of the commotion, hoping that something bad hadn't happened. What he saw was exactly what he had been least expecting.

It was Slix, dashing around like mad with a very familiar mechanoid strapped to his back. Gin quickly covered his face to hide his growing smile and stood back, glancing up at Kayleer. The sight was unexpected, and a good reprieve from the seriousness of earlier.

Slix clearly wasn't in danger, so Kayleer allowed himself to follow suit. He grinned, surpressing a laugh and calmly walked over to his frantic robot friend.

Upon his approach, Slix stopped moving and cowered, shaking, exposing his back to his master as if to beg him to remove what was there. Kayleer removed the prying hand and held it for inspection. He turned to Gin, eyeing his prosthetic.

"Friend of yours?"

The hand writhed pitifully in Kayleer's grasp, desperate to get away and return to its home in the ducts and the vents. It uttered anxious twittering chirps, created by rubbing the steel plating of its fingers together, and against Slix's shrieks from earlier the sound was pathetically doleful.

"I have been after that hand for years," he explained calmly, surprised to actually see the mechanoid up close again. "It just skittered off my work table one day, and it's been living in my ship ever since."

He shrugged, as though his explanation was perfectly normal. In the other room, so close to the racket from moments earlier, he could hear Tejed still snoring, oblivious to everything. When she went out, she went out like a light, it would seem.

Smiling he reached forwards, to take the hand from Kayleer, but as it had demonstrated time and time again it had a mind of its own and a will of iron. With a particularly strong wrench and a wiggle, it slipped free from Kayleer's claws in mid pass and fell loudly to the floor before skittering away and disappearing into the shadows.

"Damn it!" Gin yelled, trying but failing to catch it. The hand was far too fast and ornery, and right before it was gone it flipped him off. He could swear he heard it snickering at him from the dark, the sound of its fingers on steel like mechanical laughter.

"Did it just-" Kayleer could have sworn he was imagining things. But despite the accidental invention's lack of a mouth or brain, it would seem it had the ability to have a very opinionated and vocal response to being handled. Kayleer wondered to himself what kind of engineer would accidentally give his own prosthetic a mind of its own. Curious, and thoroughly amused, he asked Gin. "How did an attempt at a prosthetic turn into _that_? Slix has an intentionally complex brain, and not even he's ever had the nerve to say 'fuck you' to his creator!" he said condescendingly, laughing.

Slix had calmed down considerably. the terrorizing hand was gone, but he was still traumatized. Seeking comfort he wrung his way around Kayleer's body and onto his shoulder, still trembling with fear.

Gin shrugged, just as confused as Kayleer apparently was.

"I don't know," was all he said, trying to remember back to that day so many years ago. "I remember working on a new arm for myself... Maybe there was a power surge or something at the time. Either way, next thing I knew the damn thing quite literally up and ran away."

He stared at the spot where the hand had disappeared, momentarily wondering where the thing had made its nest and what kind of life it had lived for so long in the ducts and the vents. It didn't need to eat, it was a hand. And it didn't care about air quality, it was a machine. All in all Gin was just as thoroughly confused as Kayleer and he had no answers. But he found himself laughing the more he thought about it.

It was all just so ridiculous.

"I take it your second attempt went slightly better?" he asked, motioning towards Gin's right arm. "That one isn't going to fall off and start attacking Slix, is it?" Kayleer was taking advantage of the mundane situation. Perhaps he was simply reeling from the idea that he had something of Gin's to make fun of.

Kayleer knelt down and picked up the armor Slix had at last finished repairing. Happy that at last his suit would be complete again, he placed his helmet over his head. Moving seemingly with a will of its own, the circuitry of the once separate, damaged pieces reintegrated itself with the whole, flashing sparks of impulse to the rest of the suit as it moved into place.

Kayleer's HUD flashed on, running diagnostics; everything had been repaired. Gratefully, he patted Slix's head and then retracted his armor once more, slinking it back to that familiar metallic pack on his spine.

Despite himself Gin found himself laughing at Kayleer's attempt at either humour or sarcasm, he didn't care. It was such a welcome amnesty, to laugh genuinely at something so wonderfully ordinary.

"I should hope not," laughed Gin, absently flexing his mechanical arm. "I think poor Slix is frightened enough as is. How's your suit?"

He had noticed the damaged parts of Kayleer's neck piece and helmet but hadn't thought to ask about them at the time.

"Optimally functional, thanks to my repair crew," Kayleer replied. And the fact came as a relief, considering the likelihood of having to face phazon again in the near future.

Kayleer paused for a moment. He wasn't used to talking to humans face to face, especially now that he had his helmet back. It surprised him how naturally it had been to simply retract it instead of keeping it on.

"Normally I keep my helmet on, when talking to your kind, but you seem to have gotten over this," he said, gesturing to his face. He smiled. "I'm glad."

"You don't really bother me," was Gin's response. "I guess after the initial shock I just… Didn't really care anymore. Plus I see Tejed and she's…"

He trailed off and smiled at Kayleer, hoping the pirate would sense his change in demeanour from hostile to friendly.

"Really I was just tired," he continued. "Tejed called me when I was busy and I haven't had much sleep either. I didn't really appreciate being torn from my duties without at least an explanation, ya know?"

"She seems to have a habit of doing that," Kayleer replied. "Right now I'm supposed to be on patrol, in a city, on a planet on the other side of the galaxy," he let out a sarcastic laugh. "Instead I'm here, dragged along by an escaped pirate experiment, dealing with a Federation conspiracy involving phazon."

Kayleer sighed, he shook his head. "But I suppose I should consider myself lucky. I would rather be here, with her, dealing with it, then serving under the Federation, living in ignorance."

Gin nodded knowingly. Though there were many far more comfortable things they could be doing, they had to do this first and foremost. Comfort and wellbeing had taken sideline to something that had to be done, for the sake of everyone.

And then the already dim lights dimmed that little bit more and the calming almost emotionless voice of Gin's computer sounded through the PA system.

"Master, we're nearing Antares," it said, its simulated voice deep and strong. Gin's good mood seemed to darken. The simple goodness they were feeling was about to give way to solemnity, as the gravity of the situation became heavier. But still smiling he patted Kayleer on the shoulder before he left.

"I have to get back up front," he said quietly, and he motioned at the closed door inset into the wall nearby. "Why don't you go wake up Tejed?"

He turned and left for the pilot bay, leaving Kayleer and Slix to the task at hand.

_He's even comfortable enough to touch me now. _Kayleer smirked. Gin had accepted his companionship far faster than any human he had encountered before. That, he realized, would make the impending task of taking down the Federation's phazon program all the more easier, if they weren't at each other's throats.

Kayleer's eyes widened in response to the task he was given. He didn't want to be the sucker who had to wake that temperamental mutation from her slumber.

With a pessimism about him he approached the room and quietly opened the door. He quickly realized that wasn't necessary, as Tejed's snoring was loud enough to send a snarling resonance through the floor and walls of the room.

Kayleer considered for a moment having Slix do the dirty work and wake her up, but he figured that in the likely event of being met with violence, he'd rather be injured himself than have his mechanoid torn to shreds.

He called her name once, trying to sound his translator above the snoring. Nothing. He tried again, almost roaring, finding himself frustrated that his best efforts were significantly outmatched in volume by her snoring. Finally he gave up and realized sound would do nothing.

Fearfully he approached her, placing a cold, mechanical hand on her shoulder and shaking her. "Wake up."

"It's too early for breakfast, mom," she muttered groggily, still very much asleep. Sleep was too glorious right now to leave so suddenly, and with a tired groan she grabbed the blankets and pulled them up over her face, murmuring something in German.

Kayleer pulled back, momentarily realized it must be a natural reflex for humans to spout gibberish when they straddled the realms of sleep and waking. His task still incomplete he tried again, this time shaking her more strongly, raising his voice. "WAKE UP!"

"I'M UP!" she yelled, sitting up straight and very surprised. She didn't remember what she had been dreaming, but the remnants of the fantasy felt good, instead of the nightmares she was so used to living through each night. Tired she reached up and held a hand to her head, yawning loudly, before glaring at Kayleer.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" she snapped, annoyed. "Get the fuck out of here before I eat your god damned face."

She'd get to the pilot bay when she was ready.

"Gin told me to wake you up," he said calmly. "Any further orders, he can direct to you." And with that he left, assuming that, sooner or later, Tejed would follow.

She glared at his retreating back, feeling even more tired than she had before, if that was even possible. Or if it even made any sense. With a groan she slid from the bed and sat at the edge, holding her face in her hands. She was too tired to do anything, but that never stopped her before. Three days? That was nothing. She had gone for upwards of a week without sleep before, and though it had been a week of sleep deprived torture it made her realize that three days was nothing special.

"Why is it always me?" she asked, trying her damndest not to yawn.

_"You're special,"_was the voice's decidedly sardonic reply, and surprised the hybrid looked up into the darkness.

"I haven't heard you for a while."

_"Aww you missed me?"_

"Pssh, never," she spat, rising from the bed. "If I had it my way I would've drilled you out of my head months ago."

_"And kill us both? Bad move, Ms. Jenal. Even I'm not _that_ stupid."_

She rolled her tired eyes and left the room for the pilot deck. There was no use in arguing with herself.

Antares. The Luminoth called it Naimor. It had three gas giants in orbit around it, as well as two rocky worlds uninhabitably close the the binary system. The only livable bodies were two moons in orbit around the first gas giant.

Kayleer tried to remember information about the star system, distracting himself for a moment as he noticed Tejed enter the room.

"Any idea what we might be looking for?" he asked her. "Any major Federation bases around here? Or was this system merely a detour for the Ing after it captured the stores of phazon?"

Though the voice yattered mindlessly in the back of her head she ignored it completely and set her focus on the map of the system that Gin had pulled up. Seemingly aimlessly, she traced a claw along the orbits of the gas giants, whispering to herself too low for Gin or Kayleer to hear.

"The rocky worlds are too extreme," she said after a moment, her eyes still on the map. "Too close to Antares and its companion star, Antares B. Not even the Federation could build on worlds where the very air itself melts…"

Though they hadn't told her exactly what to look for (their exact orders had simply been "Go to the Antares system and catch a thief") Tejed had enough knowledge about the stars in general to hypothesize their best course of action. Her pointing claw came to a rest, then, on the smallest of the gas giants: a world similar to Jupiter. Its thick gas atmosphere was brilliant red with streaks of yellow and it sported not one set but two sets of magnificent rings, intersecting and at far different angles. It was a beautiful planet, but it wasn't where their destination lay.

"There," she announced, pointing to a tiny little speck of dust: one of the planet's moons. "I remember that moon. It's been nicknamed Hades simply due to its proximity to Antares. If there's anywhere the Federation would build anything, it would be there. The other moon is too volcanically active, but this one… This one is perfect…"

She trailed off and stared at the tiny little moon, no bigger it was than Mars back in the Sol system she had grown up in.

"No," she continued, her voice far away. "Hades is cold…"

"Right then... shall we land?" Kayleer asked. It was good that their search had been narrowed down, even if it was to an entire celestial body.

He heard the pessimism in Tejed's voice, and he knew she was not the only one who felt that way. In the back of his mind, making planetfall was the last thing Kayleer wanted to do.

Gin said nothing, but he did maneuver his ship in closer, scanning the planetoid for anything remotely man made. The moon was small so a complete orbit didn't take very long, and it gave them all a good view of the moon's surface.

It was dark, dank, and dismal, its icy surface marred by ancient and new debris collisions. Tejed surmised that the close proximity to the gas giant was the cause: renegade bits of space borne fragments from its two intersecting rings had left their telltale scars on Hades' pockmarked surface. All in all it didn't seem like the most pleasant of planetoids, though secretly she was vying for the cold embrace it would give her. Anything to stop the almost unbearable heat the phazon gave her was welcome.

A moment later the ship picked up a signal, however faint. Computer had found something not natural, and with a skilled hand Gin brought the ship into a tighter orbit, ever closer to the top of Hades' cold, cold sky.

"There's a habitation," he said curtly. The atmosphere in the pilot bay was tense as the ship began to descend through the cloudless sky. Almost instantly there was a distinct drop in temperature and Gin shuddered even as Computer quickly rectified the ship's life support.

A moment later, planetfall. The main windows showed nothing but white against black. There was atmosphere here, but it was thin. Above the sky was blacker than black and the stars shone bright, and below the ice was stark white and blue, and the stillness of the scene was unnerving. Far off in the distance, for there was no wind and the clarity was absolute, there stood a structure. Its tall buildings pointed accusingly at the sky in an almost derogatory manner.

It seemed almost dead, but in such an environment death seemed to be the norm.

Without a word Gin put on his helmet and stood, looking over everyone exactly once.

"Ready?"

Kayleer called out his armor, peering suspiciously at the dark structure ahead. It could well be what they were looking for, or it could simply be an abandoned habitation. Perhaps Hades had gone the way of Twin Tabula; been subject to brief research and then abandoned, though Kayleer hoped for different reasons.

Nodding to his human companions, he waited as the hull of the ship opened, exposing them to the cruel, chilling atmosphere.

The trek through the cold was arduous at best. Gin had landed his ship a good ways away so as not to arouse any imminent suspicion, leaving them to a walk through the ice and the cold. Tejed had hoped the moon would have at least a breathable atmosphere, so she could take her helmet off and let the dire cold make contact with her hot skin. Instead she was trapped behind her tinted black visor, staring resolutely ahead as the ominous structure loomed ever closer.

With their minds set to the task at hand, the trek had gone by swift, and soon they found themselves staring up at the cold shell of what looked to be a relatively new installment. The paint on the outer steel walls, though faint, was clear enough to read:

GALACTIC FEDERATION OF PLANETS  
SECTOR 7742

Disturbed, Gin looked back at Tejed then Kayleer, then back at the structure. There was a deceptively tiny little door inset into the wall, dwarfed by the massive scale of the containing walls. Thick icicles hung from the frame and hesitant Gin approached it. He was surprised when the door slid open on his approach. Obviously, whoever was here either wasn't expecting visitors and had thus skimmed on security, or the door had been left open by the Ing possessed Luminoth, if this is indeed where he had been.

Without a word Gin stepped in, out of the cold, and his friends followed. The door came to a loud close behind them, its echo ringing deep into the Federation installment. Everything was dark and cold and quiet, and he could hear the groan of the ice underneath his feet. He turned on a light and looked forward.

Gun at the ready, Kayleer advanced into the facility. He realized shortly that this was indeed the likely place the dark Luminoth had gotten his phazon supply. The same containers he had seen on the ship lined the complex conveyor of the facility, being transported, filled, emptied, moved along by heartless machines for purposes he could not fathom.

_My armour will protect me. If anything goes wrong it will protect me,_he told himself. But despite the comfort of such a barrier, he couldn't help but feel a steady increase in heart rate as he made his way deeper into the facility. As he turned a bend, a new assortment of mechanical horrors awaited him.

The phazon conveyor from the previous room had given way to a long hallway of containment tubes. Testing vials, large enough to accommodate moderately-sized creatures. Exhuming a malevolent blue glow from each of them, it was obvious the pods held phazon within them. Kayleer dared to move in close to one to get a better look.

The view was heavily obscured by the opaque blue substance, and for a moment Kayleer thought what he saw was his reflection. He found himself staring into the shivering countenance of a space pirate. Eyes clamped shut, mandibles twitching with muted roars of pain.

Once he realized what he was looking at, he stepped back. Heart now racing, Kayleer looked around. Thousands... there must have been thousands of testing pods, each with a limp, floating body within them.

Prisoners of war. Kayleer knew there must have been many captured under Federation authority. He had thought they would be imprisoned... but used for phazon testing? It was an act of unimaginable, amoral cruelty he had never thought humans still capable of.

His rapid breathing clouded the opaque glass of his visor. He stepped back, trying to distance himself from the horror he had just been forced to witness. Stepping back only placed him front of another pod, another test subject. He was surrounded by them, thousands of space pirates, criminals or not, sentient beings that were forcibly infected and researched upon.

Kayleer could feel the urge to vomit surfacing in his throat. His composure had deteriorated completely. He fell back against one of the containment vials and removed his helmet, letting a disgusted surge of black bile escape his body.

Breathing still rampant, he closed his eyes, trying desperately to come up with a reason, an explanation for why the Federation was doing what they were doing. Lost in terrorized thoughts, he almost forgot the presence of his human friends. To him, there was nothing besides himself and the thousands of test subjects.


	4. Part 4

Where Kayleer had succumbed to complete shock, Tejed's response was wholly different. It was fear, yes, but something else, as well. The sight of so much phazon concentrated in one area was having an adverse effect on her mind and put her in what could best be described as a trance. The Dark Luminoth's stolen cargo had been one thing, but this was entirely different. Confused and frightened she fell against the nearest wall she could find, her legs trembling beneath her and a curious nausea welling up in the pit of her stomach.

Though both Kayleer and Tejed were feeling profound emotions, Gin, while surprised, felt oddly calm, as though deep down he had known all along that such crimes were not above the Federation. It was a good mindset to be in: it allowed him to keep thinking rationally.

"Tejed, snap out of it," he instructed, slapping her lightly on the cheek. It seemed to have no effect on her, her eyes having glazed over under the tint of her visor, and he turned then to Kayleer. He was obviously terrified, having retched onto the cold grilled floor.

Desperate, he turned back to Tejed but to no avail. He was alone now, in a place where the toxin stood at the ready in Federation stamped canisters.

There was a sound from his left, and quickly he turned. It was a worker, a scientist. Gin's eyes narrowed in rage.

"You!"

The scientist looked up, startled, obviously not expecting visitors. Without a word he turned to run, but Gin was far too quick, and quick as a flash he had the wiry little man by the arm.

"What are you doing here?" the scientist stuttered, obviously afraid for his life.

"What are _you_doing here?" Gin parroted back, sweeping an arm around him at the atrocities so casually being committed. The scientist gulped and looked around as well.

"I just work here," was his quiet response.

"What are you DOING HERE?!" Gin yelled back, shaking him by the collar to get his point across.

"Experiments, okay!" he blurted, eyes squeezed shut. "Experiments. That's what they're doing… _Experiments_…"

"Pathetic," Gin snarled, pushing him away.

The man stepped back, relieved to have been released. He brushed himself off and clutched the datapad in his hand.

"W-what the hell do you care, they're just pirates," he continued, still stuttering. In his fear he hadn't noticed the two other armored beings in the facility who had collapsed on the floor. The only person he knew to have intruded upon his research was the Federation human before him, and the man couldn't even begin to imagine why he should care what was done here.

"They're helping to further the cause against them and all the despicable crimes they've committed across Federation space," he said coldly. "They deserve whatever's coming to them."

"No one," Kayleer found the strength to speak up, wiping the bile from his mandibles as he suppressed a groan. "No one deserves this..."

The scientist jumped back quickly, his face contorting into a combination of fear and abject disgust at the sight of Kayleer that he made no attempt at hiding.

"You're with _that_?!" he exclaimed, looking back at Gin and also seeing Tejed for the first time. He quickly assumed she was one of those disgusting pirate beasts, too. "Well that explains a lot, then."

He sniffed condescendingly, his ego placing him high above these intruders in his mind.

"You're with them, you deserve no less."

Gin opened his mouth to reply, the scientist's attitude rubbing him entirely the wrong way.

Kayleer's terror quickly gave way to anger. His breathing still stuttered, struggling to keep pace with his pounding heart. Face still bare and exposed he approached the scientist whose experiments were mercilessly torturing his people.

"How can you live with yourself, doing what you're doing here. You think they're more deserving of suffering because of what they are or what they've done?! You're doing exactly what they did... and even they had the sense to stop," he stammered, looking to Tejed. Exactly what they had done, only on a scale he couldn't even imagine. The pirates, at the very least, never had this many sentient test subjects. The universe didn't need any more phazon-fueled monsters, what if these were to escape?

Kayleer said nothing more, and merely stood, trying to suppress the murderous urge to rip the scientist to pieces.

"There is no reprieve for monsters," the scientist snapped angrily, disgusted by the pirate trying to make him see 'the error of his ways'. Error? The only error was the fact that the test subjects were still alive, instead of razed and burned and destroyed as he believed the space pirates so desperately deserved.

Gin was as revolted by this man's corrupt sense of justice as the scientist was of Kayleer, and like him, Gin made no move to disguise it under false emotional pretenses. Disgust was disgust, and it didn't need to be hidden.

"You sicken me."

The voice had belonged to neither of them, and surprised Gin glanced back. Tejed had found her feet again and was standing, however haphazardly, by the wall. Keeping herself upright seemed to be a chore all its own but she managed to walk, however slowly, to the congregation.

"I used to be just like you," he seethed, finding twisted humour in the way the scientist's face knotted into such abhorrence at her words. She stopped in front of him and allowed the jet black of her visor to swivel back. "I used to be stupid, ignorant of the ways of the world. But look at me now."

She laughed, low and sultry.

"Now you'd never be able to tell that I was human at one point in time."

With no one holding him, the scientist stepped back, away from Tejed and her hot breath. But she had other things on her mind. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close again.

"I blame you," she growled. "You're the monster here, wearing your human flesh. You're the demon, not them. _Abominations like you don't deserve to live." _

Without warning she yanked him hard, almost dislocating his arm in the process, and dragged him screaming to the nearest vat of liquid corruption she could find. She proceeded to grab him by the back of the head and push his face as close to the shimmering blue surface as she could, laughing like a madman.

"I'd like to see how you like it!" she screamed. Tendrils of crackling radiation reached delicately for the scientist's face and he cried out in terror, sobbing like a lost child. "How do you think the corruption feels, you monster?!_ HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO FEEL IT BURN YOUR VEINS?!"_

Gin yelled, tried to get her to stop, but it was no use. Her grip on him was too strong, her will too resolute despite the dangerous turn it had taken. Her anger at the scientist's insolence had taken full hold and her eyes burst into bright Zebesian fire, as they had so long ago when her ship had been compromised.

"KEEP YELLING, I CAN'T HEAR YOU," she screamed, pushing the scientist's tear stained face ever closer to the phazon.

"Stop it!"

The words intertwined with a vicious pirate vocalization. Kayleer grabbed Tejed's shoulders and tore her away from the vat. Her former hostage fell in a sobbing heap to the floor, curling into a fetal position and shaking with fear. For he had come so close to being corrupted, and despite his apparent ease with bringing that upon his test subjects, he himself was terrified of the results.

Angrily, Kayleer pushed Tejed up against a containment pod and held her down. "No one else is getting infected, do you hear me?" he roared.

"If he's so fucking eager to see what phazon does then LET HIM SEE. I WANT TO SEE HIM _SQUIRM IN PAIN FOR WHAT HE'S DONE." _

Though she wanted to tear through Kayleer and lay waste to the pathetic vermin of a scientist that dared call himself human, she resisted. She resisted and took a deep breath, glaring past the pirate at the sobbing mess of a man.

"He's a monster," she seethed. "Why are you protecting him?"

She turned her blazing eyes back on Kayleer, her face knotted in rage.

Kayleer bore the brunt of her screaming and continued to hold her. He didn't want to risk letting the angry mess loose in a facility brimming with phazon. He paused, considering her question.

"Believe me when I tell you I'm just as eager to bring that monster to justice," he replied. "But this isn't the way to do it. It's bad enough we have an entire research facility full of contained phazon experiments," he shuddered. "Making another one that isn't contained is not in any of our best interests," he said, releasing her, giving her a very serious, dismal look.

There was cold hard truth to his words, and reluctantly Tejed heard and understood them. When he released his hold, she stood slowly and sighed heavily, getting her wits about her. Her close proximity to the phazon was probably what was causing her sudden spikes in raw emotion and she voiced her concern.

"I'm… Not in my right mind," she said simply, trying to retain her aloofness. "There's a lot of phazon and… I think it's messing with my head."

Gin shook his head at her volatile nature and turned back to the sniveling scientist, only to realize with disdain that he had disappeared completely.

"God damn it!" he exclaimed, turning back to Tejed and Kayleer. "While you've been busy screaming your head off, he ran away. I hope you're happy with yourself."

"Oh fuck off, Gin," she snapped, feeling the metallic taste of steel creep up in the back of her mouth. "Little bastard probably ran off to hide somewhere like the coward he is."

-  
"I don't suppose this place comes with one of those cliché self-destruct buttons," Kayleer said quietly. Though his question was in jest his meaning was all the same; the place needed to be destroyed.

"Sir, we... we have intruders, Federation-affiliated, at least one of them..."

"Compromised, right. If you have to abandon the facility then do it."

"I understand."

He cut off the communication. The higher-ups had given him the okay. They had a reasonable amount of data from the live experiments. There was no need to keep the testing in place anymore, especially not to be used as proof to expose the underground research.

The lonely scientist walked over to a control console. Here in his surveying perch he could see, all the rooms of the facility, displayed on a screen through the many cameras in place. The other researchers had left, sick of testing, sick of being surrounded by phazon. But not him.

He watched as the three intruders conversed, no doubt thinking of a plan to expose the facility, to expose him. He wouldn't allow it.

A few swift flips of switches, an alarm, a failsafe bypassed. The man had unleashed releasing protocols. With a smirk he left to make use of an escape pod, and watched as the containment pod of every stasised pirate went up, releasing a flood of phazon and awakening the test subjects, at least those that were still alive.

He left. The facility filled with the tormented screams of thousands, and the scientist smiled. No one else would ever know.

Tejed uttered a surprised hiss as the phazon spilled all over the floor, pooling at her feet and already crawling like the living thing it was up the machinery of her legs.

"Fuck," she muttered, casting a glance over at Kayleer. Already he seemed to be succumbing to his greatest fear, his eyes going wide at the phazon flood that seeped over his feet as well as Gin's. Corrupted pirates lurched onto the floor, their extremities twitching even though their bodies had long since died. The remaining few who still clung to life so tenaciously shuddered at the power coursing through their corrupted veins, and as one turned on the hot blooded entities that graced their presence.

Protectively, Tejed stepped in front of her friends, putting herself in harm's way first to keep them safe.

"I got this," she growled over her back, unsheathing her scythes.

The space pirates had long since abandoned the idea of phazon infusion. Once they had sought to use it as the ultimate steroid for their soldiers. But after numerous tests, they soon discovered the mad loss of sentience was the eventual result. Only one in a thousand pirate test subjects maintained their will by the end of the testing, and so the risk was decidedly too great to produce on a massive scale.

After the widespread infection and the battle for Phaaze, the race set to purge themselves of the substance, giving rise to a new generation of uninfected pirates.

Kayleer knew the history. It had come as a relief to him to know no further phazon infusions were dealt to his species or any other in an effort to create super weapons.

He never would have guessed that the Federation under which he had so dutifully served for years would be conducting the very experiments that drove his race to the brink of eradication.

Kayleer watched in horror as the mutatious abominations rose from their tombs and looked to him hungrily. Their dark skin was dotted with luminescent pustules and sores. The viral lifeform within them had putrified their flesh over time. Many had lost limbs or entire sections of their body to the stuff, and fell limp and lifeless to the floor. Those that were still alive moved with a strength and ardor that spoke of the steroidal infusion of phazon in their blood.

They were no longer sentient, by any stretch of the imagination. Kayleer could tell. Where a typical pirate might call out something hateful or violent in his native language, all he could hear were unintelligible roars. And though they were wordless, they spoke of pain, of anguish, of hatred and bloodlust all warped together and retched out through a phazon-spewing throat.

Kayleer immediately replaced his helmet and stared at the rising army of infected pirates. He wanted desperately to run. But he could not see an escape in any direction. The legion covered every corner of the facility. They walked, limped, carelessly over the dead bodies of the failed test subjects.

They roared, almost in unison, launching their putrid bodies at the three unassimilated intruders with a single purpose. They would not rest until they were like them.

Tejed roared right back, pumped up on adrenaline and a steady increase of phazon to her system. Snarling she tore her helmet from her head, as she was wont to do, letting her brilliant white hair flow free from the confines of her helmet. Where Kayleer and Gin saw fit to protect themselves from the corruption, Tejed saw no point. As far as she was concerned the corruption was simply another tool that she could use for her own gain, ignoring for now the adverse effect she was certain it would have on her sanity.

First and foremost, though, she sought to protect. She had made a promise to Kayleer back on Torvus. She would keep him safe from infection. And she was not going to go back on that promise, no matter how dismal the odds seemed.

Eyes now blazing feral orange from her rage she cleaved through the first of many phazon mad pirates, throwing up an impressive spray of blue-tainted blood in the process. But for each one she cut down, two more took its place. Even as the orange of her eyes faded and dulled to bright caustic blue she still left only the tiniest of dents in the encroaching army.

"KAYLEER," she yelled, her voice raw and deep. "Gin… Th-there's too many of th-them."

It was hard for her to speak rationally so her speech came out stuttered and fragmented, punctuated only by the grinding of her teeth as she fought the urge to turn on her friends instead.

Kayleer was doing his part to fight the onslaught, tiring his power reserves as he let loose round after round of plasma fire. He kicked and slashed away those that came near him, only to have another drove of infected pirates overcome him a moment later. Phazon was eating away at his armored feet on the flooded floor.

Tejed was right. This was a losing battle. The facility was locked down, even the entrance to the phazon conveyor room from before was sealed tightly behind steel doors. The facility went upwards for what seemed like an endless amount of floors, each with an identical number of compromised test pods, an identical number of loosed corrupted test subjects. They fell from the levels above and joined the massing legion, each on a mission to tear apart the trio of intruders.

Surely there were more rooms than this one. Surely there were rooms for uninterrupted research, for sample-taking and smaller biocontainment.

"Fighting is useless, we need a way out," Kayleer cried, ramming his suit's prongs into the corrupted flesh of one of his assailants.

Frantically he looked around, looking for an opening, a door, any escape. His scanning HUD aided his search. On the second level, he spotted the obscured frame of a door. It had not been affected by lockdown procedures, as its mobile rims glowed green with use rather than red.

"Up there!" he called, pointing.

Gin was the first to react. He latched on to the nearest walkway underside and started climbing his way up to the second level. Kayleer followed, trying to weave his way to Gin's position through the onslaught of animated cadavers.

"Come on!" he yelled to Tejed. She scythed down another pirate and rushed to meet him. He boosted her up to the second level, making sure she was safe before grabbing on himself. Just as soon as he got his first arm up for the ascent he was pulled right back down.

A putrid splash and the clanging of metal on metal resounded through the facility walls as Kayleer was pulled by the infected back down to the first floor. He struggled to stand, but found himself held down on all limbs. Struggling, eyes shaking with fear, surrounded by phazon and countless victims of its infection, he was helpless as one of the pirates reached a powerful arm to his face and tore his helmet off.

The infectious assailant roared, seeming to fill with glee at the sight of the exposed face of his victim. His eyes, dead and blue, showed no expression as he slashed at Kayleer's throat. The rest of his attackers followed suit, tearing apart his armor with a collective effort that rendered it like tin foil.

Cut and slashed, blood exposed to the infectious blue toxin, Kayleer's worst nightmare came to life. A terrible roar filled the room with a sound of such pain, horror, and anguish that despite its alien sound the meaning was universal. The mutagen made contact, seeping its tendrils hungrily into Kayleer's body.

Kayleer writhed on the floor. His attackers seemed to have become neutral, now regarding him as one of them. His body retched in reaction to the unstoppable burning sensation that filled every inch of his body as the virus worked its way into his blood, heart, and mind. His roars flowed out, each time warping to something different, changing with the addition of the phazon in his blood to something deadened and hissing.

After a moment the burning stopped, replaced by a chilling sensation that spoke of evil pleasures, as though the infection was something so integral and symbiotic that it was needed. Kayleer stopped struggling, letting more and more of it into his blood as his eyes turned hideous blue.

He rose up. Armor in pieces, surrounded by his brothers and now sharing their purpose. He looked to Tejed. His mind was gone, and the phazon continued to flow into his body to fuel his murderous intent. He roared, a cloud of sickening azure billowing out of his lungs, seething with power.

The pull at her mind was strong, a voracious animal inside her that demanded release and integration.

"_No_," she seethed, frothing blue at the mouth. As long as she was of her own free will, however strained that was becoming, she would be a target. The corruption had her strong but her intense need to help Kayleer was just that little bit stronger, enough to keep her rational and sane even though her body was twisted with phazon.

It seemed the tides had turned. Where thrice before she had tried to kill him, now it was him who looked at her with deadened blue eyes. Kayleer was gone. In its place, another one of _them_, of the legion. Kayleer had lost his mind and his will and that very fact filled Tejed with sorrow, which quickly warped into rage.

She leapt back down to the lower level, unwilling to leave him. She tried to speak but her voice broke and blue blood spilled from her mouth.

Roaring mindlessly, Kayleer launched himself at Tejed, and all she could do was grab his arms and hold him back as he snapped thoughtlessly at her face. She snarled back, baring her fangs.

"I will not k-kill you," she stuttered, the mere act of speaking an effort. Easier said than done. Mindlessly he bit at her, trying to draw blood, to get her will to submit to that of the hive mind, and though she wanted to use her scythes and behead him here and now, the thought was completely out of the question. So she did the next best thing; she brought him up against a wall and smashed his head into the thick steel, hoping it would knock him out.

The result was instantaneous: he went limp, catatonic, his mandibles lolling at awkward angles. Without another word she slung him over her shoulder and pushed her way through the corrupted horde to the spot where she had last seen Gin. Up above, she could see the glowing green of the door he had disappeared through, and without another thought in her crazed head she jumped and dug her claws into the wall.

Gin motioned to Tejed to hurry, offering a hand to pull her up. The second floor was slightly less overrun than the ground level and so the pair had an easier time escaping.

The doors clamped shut behind them. Gin located the door controls, those which allowed it the electricity to open and close, and promptly drove a mechanical fist into it.

It sputtered sparks once before dimming offline, leaving the horde to claw at the now non-functioning door.

Gin allowed himself a sigh of relief. Their makeshift barrier would only hold for so long, but at least now they had a chance to catch their breath, collect themselves and think of a plan. He turned his attention to the disheveled, clearly infected pirate in Tejed's arms, and for a moment, fatigued, he did not recognize it.

The glowing blue blood leaking from the virtually unarmored pirate's body left Gin few hints at recognition, all he saw was one of the legion. "What the hell are you doing, bringing _that_in with us?!"

"How c-can you not recognize him," she snarled. It took Gin only a moment to realize who the pirate in question was, at which time he grew sombre.

"He got infected?"

Tejed nodded once, and Gin swore underneath his breath. Tejed was one thing, but considering how much control she was showing right now she posed no threat. Kayleer was something completely different. If he regained consciousness there was no telling what he would do. He wasn't the same as Tejed. He hadn't been exposed to phazon long enough to build up an immunity to it. He was unpredictable.

Gin eyed Kayleer not with disgust, but a curious sort of pity. He didn't understand what the corruption felt like and he didn't relish finding out any time soon. Quickly he looked back, glanced around the room. There was a door in the far wall and he ran towards it, Tejed close behind.

Neither of them knew where they were going, but anywhere was good so long as it was _away_from the horde.

"Do you know if he can be s-saved?" Tejed breathed, her heavy footfalls so loud in the echoing hallways. Gin didn't have an answer. There was too much going on in his mind and though he presented his calm controlled side, in reality he was very, very confused. The words printed on the doors they passed meant nothing to him, the sterile white halls a façade masking terror and horror.

It was all too much, even for him.

Unexpectedly there was a shaking hand on his shoulder, and surprised he slowed down and turned. Tejed had found something and had stopped him, and he followed her pointing fingers.

"A… A medical bay?" he spluttered. "What use is a medical bay?"

"They might have something."

"Like what?! This is _phazon_we're talking about here, Tejed. PHAZON."

"Don't talk to me l-like I don't know!" she yelled back, claws forming into tight fists as the anger took hold. Blue tinted breath hit him in the face but he didn't flinch and she calmed only slightly. "They are working with phazon. Maybe they have a cure."

"That's ludicrous."

She thrust her face into his, delighting in the reaction she gleaned from him.

"We are checking it out," she commanded, mind already made up. There was always that chance, no matter how small. Gin rolled his eyes in frustrated annoyance and followed her. The resulting room was sterile and clean, so different than the main atrium they had almost been killed in. Machines lined the walls and filled the air with their soft insistent beeping. Nonplussed, Gin meandered in, sure that they wouldn't find anything of value.

"There's nothing here but Federation grade medical equipment," he said with a sigh. "I'm pretty sure they don't have some fancy phaz-"

"Here."

Surprised he walked over, and what he saw astounded him. It looked like a one person mobile hospital, but the tools it sported were like nothing he had ever seen before.

"It's… A cure," he said quietly, astounded. "I guess they… Found a cure."

New growls and screeches sounded down the hall, reminding them of their predicament.

"Oh god, we can only save one of you," Gin realized. He looked up at Tejed, still very much in hyper mode, and the unconscious Kayleer in her arms. Gin activated the machine, the glass rolling back smoothly, and stepped away. Without a word Tejed carefully lay Kayleer inside the machine, and looked expectantly to Gin.

"…Are you sure?"

She nodded once, and with a sigh he activated the device.

_You can't fight me._

Get out.

_Oh, but Kayleer, I'm here to stay. To run your mind. It's not yours anymore. It belongs to us..._

No, NO! GET OUT!

Though he tried to fight it, it was useless. His body was knocked out of commission but Kayleer's mind was still at work. Desperately he tried to overcome the corruption within him, to regain control over himself and purge the mindless drive to kill and infect from from his brain.

It was futile.

_It is futile._

The pirate's eyes blazed open. Unfocused, sinister blue with warped vision that showed a whitened, monotone world, only bothering to color the important, fleshly vulnerabilities of prey. The monster was angry- it had been confined. It could see two creatures on the other side of the glass, two living things it so desperately wanted to get its flesh and metal claws into, so desperately wanted to infect like it had this body.

It scraped at the glass, trying to claw its way into the prey-filled room outside. It roared, spewing phazon over the shiny perfection of the glass before it.

The pod held- it was built for this. It was built to withhold the abuse of a phazon-mad creature within it, to hold an infected human, whatever weapons he might have, in order to purge the alien creature within him.

After years of illicit research, one of the few beneficial results, if only for the scientists at work in the facility, was a technology that could tear the phazon out of one's system.

Four mechanical arms extended, grabbing the limbs and holding them down. The pirate howled in frustration, finding the continued confinement unbearable. Its phazon-filled breath fumed against the glass as roar after roar retched its way from the beast's throat.

The machine was indifferent to its struggles. It succeeded in restraining it and then extended a single, complex needle into its abdomen.

Nanobots. Tiny, complex mechanoids built to seep into the cells and consume phazon. Decades of development rendered the tiny things effective at purging the blue cancer from an organism's biology. The ultimate phazon cure, and one that was kept from the light of the public due to its origins and a blatant lack of necessity to human kind.

The process was incredibly painful. The phazon in the pirate's system was literally torn away, separated from the cells it had so forcibly forged a symbiote with. The nanobots worked their way through Kayleer's bloodstream, seeping into every vital organ and every extremity. He continued to roar, no longer in frustration but in pain and withdrawal.

It lasted about ten minutes, until finally the mechanoids had finished their work. The glow faded, and slowly the malevolent voice faded from existence. He could move again, now of his own will. The nanobots congregated back into his abdomen and left the same way they had come. The machine flooded with decontamination fluid and washed away the last of the phazon. Finally it let go of the pirate's limbs, and the glass retracted.

She wanted to immediately scoop him up into a big hug and hold him close, but even Tejed knew how bad that idea was, considering her current state of mind. So she stood a little to the back and let Gin do the talking, because every time she tried to speak it only succeeded in making her angrier.

Carefully, Gin helped the very confused pirate from the machine, surprised himself that it had actually worked and pissed off that he Federation would keep such a thing completely secret. It wasn't the first time they had done things strictly for their own well-being, and the more Gin discovered, the more he hated working for them. He vowed that the moment he hit Earth again he was going to take up a different job. Or at least stop hunting for the Federation.

"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly, noting how hard it seemed for Kayleer to stay on his feet.

The words came in as a blur as Kayleer slowly regained brain function. He let out a groan. Everything hurt, literally everything. He was covered in his own blood and even though it was purified he felt the long overdue pain of being torn apart by the horde.

Everything was a haze. He remembered fighting- in his head. He remembered hearing voices and failing to offer the slightest bit of resistance to them. He remembered his own consciousness being pushed aside so something else could make use of his body.

He remembered, before any of that, having his armor torn off and being exposed, bare, to the volatile mutagen he feared so much. Finally that fact came clear to his recomposed mind; he had been infected. But... he realized it was gone now.

His stance faltered. Still bleeding and severely weakened, it was difficult to stand. He clutched his head in his claws-it hurt the most, and somewhere in the blur of fogged memories he remembered being slammed against something, hard, before everything went dark.

"Ughh," he growled. "What the hell happened..."

In his daze he was oblivious to the terrorized noise of the infected pouring in from the walls around him.

Louder and louder came the noises of feral fury from outside their small haven. Acting fast, for their time ticked by in preciously scant seconds, Gin pulled the smallest of explosive devices from his suit and planted it on the wall, setting the timer to a scarce three minutes. Without a word Tejed grabbed Kayleer and slung him across her shoulder and ran, following Gin. Thinking rationally for the shortest of moments she grabbed a datapad before they booked it out of there as fast as they possibly could.

Behind the doors finally crumpled and the infected masses began to pour in, hindered only by the bare width of the doorframe.

Gin angled towards a service door in the back, Tejed's heavy footfalls sounding close behind him. When they were through Tejed turned and kicked it once, twice, effectively destroying the internal mechanisms and rendering the door useless. Gin gave her a look, as if to ask if that was really necessary, and she just smirked back before handing Kayleer the datapad.

"Hold onto this," she stammered, her breathing heavy. She needed her claws free for the next part: an empty elevator shaft. They needed to get back down to the first floor and go out the same way they came in. In under three minutes. Gin was first, having already jumped down and slid down the smooth walls. Tejed was next, having dug her claws into the steel before jumping down, effectively shaking the entire floor.

Something blew to their left: a vat of phazon. Growling Tejed pushed Gin forwards in an effort to keep him from getting infected, too, shielding Kayleer from the corrupted rain. Using her now free claws she proceeded to do what she did best: rend and tear her way back to the entrance they had come through, leaving a bloodied swathe of corrupt and dead bodies in her wake.

"Over here!" Gin yelled, having already reached the exit. A quick slash later and Tejed was there, too, already feeling exhaustion tugging at her mind under the haze of phazon-induced fury. The darkened corridor they had come down before was now lit in flashing red and blue from the containment breaches.

"FUCK," Tejed yelled, coming to a halt. "There's no atmosphere out there."

So close and yet so damnably far. It was far too much of an injustice to save Kayleer after all this, only to have him wither and die without oxygen to breath. As always Gin was quiet. He accessed his ship from his suit and a moment later instructed Tejed to get down. They were cutting it close. Already there was no more than a half a minute remaining, before they'd all be incinerated in the resulting phazon based inferno.

The crash was loud and caught Tejed completely off guard. Coughing she looked up, waving the dust away. Gin's ship, still as sleek and black as ever, in the center of the facility with them. She eyed him sideways and allowed herself a gruff laugh. Never in all her years would she have expected Gin to do something so drastic. But done it he had, and with the breathable oxygen rapidly siphoning from the complex, they quickly ran onto his ship.

It was a blessed relief to see the terror of the blue corruption rapidly grow smaller and smaller, until the facility ceased to exist and the moon Hades seemed silent once more. Gently Tejed slung Kayleer from her shoulder and set him down on the floor.

"Don't get too comfy," ordered Gin. "There's enough phazon in that complex to-"

He was cut short by the explosion, muffled as it was with no air for the sound to travel through. The dark of space turned brilliant blue, then white, before fading into deepest red. The shockwave travelled through all dimensions of space and hit them a moment later, rocking the ship almost gently. Until finally, it ceased, and when Tejed looked back out the window, Hades was gone.

Against the brilliant double rings of the gas giant, there was nothing left but a cloud of rock and debris.

Slix rushed from the overhang of the ship where had been so patiently waiting since the trio's departure. He rushed to meet his injured master and merely circled around him in concern- there was nothing for him to repair.

Hades was gone, as were the terrible experiments that had been conducted on its surface. The pirates were dead, set free, and that fact gave Kayleer some solace.

He was silent. He had so much to say and yet no idea how to say it. He had been torn from the grip of corruption even though Tejed had had the chance to free herself instead. An act of such selflessness and mercy that he was truly humbled.

He kept his gaze on the floor and spoke softly, his natural, guttural voice rasping struggled through his translator.

"Thank you."

"I made a promise," was all Tejed said, the corruption leaving her system painfully slowly. "Do you s-still have the datapad?"

Gin looked over at them, surprised. He hadn't noticed Tejed grab anything in their mad rush to escape and the thought itself hadn't occurred to him. Sheepishly he resumed his work: setting a course back to Earth, before standing and approaching them.

"Datapad?"

Kayleer looked to his claws. He had hardly noticed when Tejed had given it to him but he had dutifully held on to it.

Data. Results. Information from the countless experiments conducted on the imprisoned sentients in the facility. Phazon infusion rates, mutations and augmentations, all recorded and transmitted into the small digital data receiver.

"I guess we have our proof," he said solemnly, handing it to Tejed.

Snarling Tejed quickly threw the delicate little device to Gin, sneering as he fumbled but didn't drop it.

"I don't want to look at that anymore," she hissed angrily, turning to leave.

"Where are you going?" asked Gin, surprised.

"Sleep."

No more words needed to be said. She was utterly exhausted, even more so than usual. Sleep would do her, and everyone else on the ship, much good. So with no more words and a steady cloud of blue with every breath, she turned and left. At this point all she cared to experience was the bliss of sleep.

The two watched as Tejed stormed out of the room.

"What was she thinking..." Kayleer whispered. He raised his voice, turning to Gin. "Why would she save me... she's been suffering through it for _years_. I didn't deserve to take her only chance," he rasped, shaking his head.

Tejed had been carrying phazon in her system for years, enduring the insanity, the voices, the inhuman, murderous drive. And he? He was infected for less than an hour and immediately he had lost his mind. "I was already gone, she should have cured herself," he couldn't help repeating himself. Kayleer was overcome with a hideous guilt and he could not stop regretting Tejed's decision.

Gin did what he was finding to be his go-to response these days: he shrugged. He didn't have the answers Kayleer was looking for, and he didn't understand why Tejed did what she did half the time, either. As far as he was concerned her mind was an enigma that nobody would ever understand.

"Maybe she thought you were more important."

He watched as Kayleer's confusion only seemed to intensify, afraid that he was simply no help in this matter.

"Look, if you really want to know, your best bet is to ask her," Gin said quietly. "She's the one with the answers, not me."

And without another word he turned and disappeared from the pilot bay, presumably to the nearby connected kitchen. Not only was he tired, as well, but he was also hungry. It would take a while to get back to Earth at their speed. He had purposely set the ship at a slower rate to allow for some much needed rest, so he was going to make the most of it before they made planetfall once again.

At this point Kayleer was too ashamed to face Tejed. After what he had cost her, he couldn't bear it. He opted for now to merely remain alone on the pilot deck. He rested his back against the ship and felt the chill of metal on his bare and bruised skin. His black, pirate blood dirtied the floor around him. He realized he must have been infected and assimilated fairly quickly if his injuries were not enough to kill him.

He had asked why she had done it, but the question was purely rhetorical. He knew why. Had he been in the same position, he would have done the same for her. He didn't need to ask anyone to realize that.

But that fact didn't stop him from feeling guilt for the resentment she surely had for him. She had every right to be mad, and it continued to amaze him how much self-control she exercised despite her corrupted state.

Regret would do nothing for either of them. The fact was that, somehow, he had been purged of infection. It was possible.

"How?" Kayleer spoke to himself. Slix trilled at his feet, keeping a distance and circling with concern at injuries he was not used to seeing on his usually armored master.

Though Kayleer's suit was gone, the spinal interface to which it was attached was still intact. It contained the blueprints and data for his suit as well as a medical log of everything that happened internally. Kayleer desperately wanted to know what had happened to cure him, so the order he gave Slix was simple; "Retrieve medical log."

Without hesitation, the little mechanoid clambered to Kayleer's back and jacked a wire from his forehand directly into the metal sheathing. He remained for a moment before retracting it and returning to divulge the data. It ran over his large, blue eyes in Aetherian writing as Kayleer read.

Functions normal. Functions normal. After a while, the parts he was looking for. Unknown parasite present. Terminal infection. Then, unknown mechanoids in bloodstream. Shortly after, functions normal. It made no mention of his physical injuries, as those could be manually observed.

"Nanobots; so that was how they did it," he said. Slix's eyes flashed back to their usual blue and he stared almost expectantly at his master. Kayleer smiled. "If I can build you, then one day I can repay my debt to Tejed. Phazon-consuming nanobots can't be impossible to replicate, can they?" He turned his gaze to the hallway Tejed had disappeared down into, then to the expanse of stars that lay just outside. "Once this is all over, I promise, Tejed, I will find a cure for you."

Sleep was proving a hard thing to accomplish. Despite the fatigue and exhaustion that plagued her mind she found herself wide awake, staring despairingly at the darkened ceiling. Though she had retracted her suit, her skin still burnt to the touch like a perpetual fever and she couldn't manage to slow down her racing mind.

The thought that maybe she had made the wrong choice in saving Kayleer in place of herself never crossed her mind. It had been the right thing to do, and she had made a promise. Tejed Jenal never went back on her promises, it was one of the things she prided herself in most.

That said, she was regretting her decision to take off her helmet and let the phazon infect her. While the overdose and subsequent corruption had helped them stave off the Federation abominations, it hadn't helped her keep Kayleer from getting infected.

In that vein her promise had been broken.

Suddenly very sad she rolled over onto her side and hugged the pillow close to her face, squeezing her eyes shut and uttering a shallow sob.

"I broke my promise," she cried. The anger melted away with the blue of her eyes, and her entire body sagged, heavy with guilt. It may not have mattered in the grand scheme of things, for the pirate was alright now, just tired. But the idea that she had indeed broken her promise hurt her mind more than the phazon ever did.

Distraught, she curled into the blankets and allowed herself to cry uncontrolled, not caring if anyone heard her. In the back of her mind she hoped she'd cry herself to sleep, and she let the sorrow overtake her.

He could hear her crying. That exclusively human response that seemed to be their go-to reaction for everything, whether happy or sad. Despite Tejed's apparent genetic existence being more space pirate and phazon than anything else, she was still human at her very core.

Kayleer remembered what she had said to him the last time she cried.

Was that all she needed? He knew that as the human she was, she hated to suffer alone. Sighing, he rose to his feet. Still limping slightly, he made his way to the lamenting sounds. He opened the door. She was there, sobbing, confiding only to the indifferent bed she lied upon. Quietly he stood above her and placed a hand on her quivering shoulder.

"Tejed...," he began, looking for words. "It's going to be alright. I promise."

No surprise hugs this time. She was too tired to move, her muscles crying out in pain every time she tried to move them. Stifling her crying she turned her head and looked up at Kayleer, noticing for the first time how much of a mess he was.

"It'll be alright," she parroted. "But will_ you_be alright? Even though I… Broke my promise?"

Others before herself, always. Kayleer's health was more important to her than her own well-being. Same with Gin, and her sister, and her entire family. Why worry about herself, when there were so many others who deserved even more?

"You broke nothing," he replied. "You said you'd take the brunt of it for me and you did," he paused. It was true, she had, in a self-sacrificing way he never would have imagined.

"Thank you," he finished. And that one simple phrase was filled with so much meaning he didn't feel it was expressible in any spoken language he knew. Words were not enough. He knew the human well enough to know what would get his gratefulness across, and so, stomaching his pride, he wrapped his arms around his friend and embraced her.

Despite his nature, despite the action not coming with ease to any part of him, Kayleer felt it was necessary.

She was dumbstruck. Kayleer had always adamantly refused physical contact. It wasn't so much beneath him, as it was simply something his species did not partake in. So to have him embrace her in such a manner left her thoroughly confused.

But the confusion melted away and she accepted his gratitude and his thanks, hugging back tightly. The tears had stopped and her sorrow seemed to have lifted for the most part. For the time being, she was grateful for the contact he was offering her.

But a moment later she had to pull away. The tug of fatigue was too much for her to ignore and considering she was going on almost four sleepless days, it would be a godsend to finally fall asleep for more than a measly hour.

"Thank you," she said softly, thankful for the simple act of him being there.

Nothing more was said. Kayleer had done all he could do to thank her, at least until he found himself the years of time and devotion it would take to replicate the nanobots that had saved him. He wasn't even sure it was possible and so he kept it to himself for now.

Tejed pushed him away and sighed. It was obvious to Kayleer that she was exhausted, and now that her spirits seemed to be lifted somewhat he decided it was best she be left alone. She needed rest, more than anyone else.

So with a last, comforting touch he let his hand rest on her shoulder for a moment, giving her a look of empathetic concern before closing his eyes and giving a shallow bow.

"Get some rest, you need it," he said simply. With that he respectfully up and left her to it.

Gin watched as Kayleer left the room and took up a vigil by the window watching the stars stream by. The sounds of Tejed's sobbing had stopped and the ship was peacefully quiet. Already it seemed that the pirate's wounds were less grievous. The blood had ceased to ooze and the open wounds seemed to have stitched themselves back up that smallest of bits.

"Fast healer?" Gin asked quietly, almost afraid to break the soft veil of silence that had settled over the ship.

Kayleer turned abruptly to who had addressed him. Had Gin heard everything?

It was true, pirates were fast healers, they were engineered to be efficient. But that wasn't something Kayleer really cared to discuss at the moment.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked sharply.

"Not very long."

He took a sip of his tea and turned his attention to the stars. He thought it best not to mention how much of their conversation he had heard. Privacy was a beautiful thing, and he didn't want to infringe on theirs. Quickly he changed the subject.

"Will you be fine by yourself? I need some sleep, too."

Kayleer could tell he was lying. But calling him out on it would do no good. He realized he was more self-conscious about his interaction with Tejed than he should have been, and quickly he shrugged it off.

"I will be fine," he growled. And with that he left to reclaim that familiar, comfortable spot down in the cargo bay.

Finally much needed rest had been attained and, silent and dark, Gin's ship made the slow journey back to Earth. Past the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri and its two bright companions. Through the cloud of dust and debris that separated the rocky planets from the massive gas giants. And finally, hours and hours past, into the same space shared by the bright blue marble that he had been born and grown up on.

Gin had been the first to awake, thanks to Computer's incessant prodding. After the tedious process of authorization, his ship flanked on both sides by massive Federation vessels, he was allowed to make planetfall at the designated drop point for Federation bounty hunters. Almost quietly, his ship landed in the yard, and across the way he could see Tejed's ship sitting docile.

It pleased him to know that Jarvis had returned safely. That meant Tejed had her ship again. Which meant, of course, that he could kick her off to hers and have his all to himself again.

He started getting ready for his imminent departure, the datapad with all the incriminating evidence clutched tightly in his hand. Gin had decided that he would do this himself, instead of weighing down Tejed and Kayleer with, after all the action they had gone through, was nothing more than glorified paperwork.

It was strange how things went on Earth. No one would ever know what had transpired on Hades. All the data would be wiped, he knew it. The only memory of the incident would live on in their heads, and even that in time would disappear. It was actually kind of depressing, thinking about it. There would be no public trials, because the information probably would never escape. There would be only the smallest of closure. Maybe in time the Federation would crumble and their lies would escape, but probably not in his lifetime.

Thinking left a bad taste in his mouth and with a sigh Gin leaned up against the pilot chair and watched the sky.

It had been a while since he had seen blue sky again, and even though it was choked with air traffic it still made him smile, as home tends to do. He took a moment to watch the sky, before debating whether or not to wake his companions.

Kayleer snapped from his trance and looked out a porthole. They had made planetfall.

The architecture outside was familiar and human, but as Gin had said, they were on earth, a place Kayleer had never previously been. The human homeworld. Unlike many space-faring species, humans had kept their origin planet intact and in use as a base of governmental operations.

A new planet, for him at least. But Kayleer was hardly excited. He knew what they were there to do.

Gently Gin tapped at Tejed's door, and a moment later it opened.

"I felt the ship land," she said, smiling tiredly. Gin glanced at the datapad he still held, thinking as Tejed walked past and into the pilot bay. It made her feel good, to know she was home again after so long. It was almost euphoric. Slowly she stretched out her arms, then her legs, then finally her back and her neck, eliciting loud pops and cracks from her tired joints.

"So what do you have planned?" she yelled from the front of the ship. Whatever he decided on, she was sure it would be the best plan. He was the one who came up with these things, not her. As far as she was concerned it was crazy Australian magic he was weaving.

"…Something," Gin replied quietly, holding the datapad up to the light. A plan was worming its way into his head, something that surpassed the endless bureaucratic loops that the Federation, and indeed, human government in general had a habit of putting people through.

-  
It didn't take long for the Federation-grade hacker to hatch a plan. Within days, he had broadcast the information from the data pad to every receiver on earth.

Photos and timesnaps of phazon-infused pirates, records of phazon use and testing protocols, everything, all under the unmistakable Federation logo.

There was no amount of scrambling or scapegoats that could cover up what had been revealed. The names of every researcher involved was made public, and the Federation was forced to blacken their names, putting a bounty on each of them and trying the ones that were caught for war crimes.

The higher-ups who had authorized the experiments were soon brought to justice and stripped of their office, and within a few months of the turmoil, things had quieted down. The people's faith in the Federation was shaken by the conspiracy, but in time it would be forgotten. After all, it was merely the treacherous mistake of a few, and not the whole. At least, that's what was seen in the eye of the people.

The trio had done all they could do. The Federation was put under orders to seek out and shut down all, if any, remaining phazon testing facilities. Whether or not said facilities would ever be exposed was yet to be seen.

In the aftermath of the governmental turmoil, Kayleer decided his future. He resolved to abandon the Federation for good, abandon the on-going war with the pirates. He had done his part. If the war was ever meant to end, it would do so when both parties evolved.

It gave Tejed a sense of pride to know what she had helped to accomplish. What had started so innocently, letting Kayleer aboard her ship on a spur of the moment idea, had turned into a fight for their very lives, and had ended with the Federation put to rest.

Phazon testing, at least by her people, had been wiped clean. And the reality of it made her feel good.

But there was no happy ending for her. Tejed still never regretted her decision to save Kayleer. She regarded it as one of the defining moments of her life, when she had triumphed over the corruption that graced her everyday life just enough to realize that someone else was in grave danger. And when she could have cured herself, she gave it to him instead.

Phazon was wiped clean from Earth, from everyone and everywhere except for her, and that alone was painful. It left sour a sour taste in her mouth. While everyone else was mentally stable, she was still very much out of it. There were days when the anger was too strong, and the excess corruption that her body created needed to be purged. There were days when the sorrow was like a cold, dark blanket, and suicide weighed heavily on her mind. And she would always experience those days, because the one cure that could have saved her had been incinerated in the explosion of Hades.

She still didn't regret her decision. Instead she set her mind to the future, and the gleaming marble of Aether suspending silent in front of her ship. She sighed heavily and cracked her neck, rolling her shoulders as she did so. She was sore from being on her ship so long.

"Ready to go?"

She looked back and smiled at Kayleer, masking her indecisive thoughts with happiness. She was happy for him. He would be home, soon. Back with his Luminoth brethren. For him to be happy made her happy, and though a flimsy mask, her smile was sincere.

Kayleer looked at the person who had single-handedly given him his life back. The person who, on a whim, had invited him into her life and as a result had helped to purge a great injustice from the face of the galaxy. He owed his life to her, and silently he vowed to spend the rest of his days trying to repay her for all she had done for him.

He nodded, and the pair made planetfall together for the last time. Tejed had opted not to remain. She had resolved to live a life among the stars, for fear her corrupted mind would bring danger upon others. Thusly she had doomed herself to wander. And despite his pity and his desire for her to remain, Kayleer knew she was right. Even though she had saved him, even though she had a will of iron, she was infected, and until that fact changed, she would always be dangerous.

It became Kayleer's mission to free her from that lonely life. And while his friend was off on her dismally lonely journeys as a bounty hunter, the engineer was at work.

In the darkness of space it is often hard to reliably keep track of the passing of days. Digital aids can only do so much, showing blank facts and providing no observation. Years fleeted by, passing insignificantly for a person who had quite literally nothing to look forward to.

The lonely hunter rose from the pilot chair, intrigued. A transmission had come in from someplace she knew was familiar, and yet she was having a hard time remembering why.

The guttural, growling voice rasped together with the deep, mechanical sound of a translator. It was sent long ago, perhaps weeks, the radio waves only having just recently arrived. But despite their long journey, the hunter heard them bold and clear.

"Tejed," it began. The voice was deeper than she remembered. "Return to Aether when you can. I...I have a gift for you."

"Aether," she muttered, intrigued. Her memory had always been a tricky, strange thing. Places and names and meanings filtered through like odd sized rocks, grabbing memories that were ancient and letting pass through memories that were fresh and young. Tentatively she reached up and wound a finger through her hair, confused.

"But Aether…"

She wanted to go so bad. Kayleer was there, and despite everything she said and did and tried to tell herself, despite all that the voice inside her head and the phazon told her, she loved him. And she didn't want to hurt him. It was the only reason she had set herself adrift by her lonesome for so long. As a free bounty hunter she was chained by no rules, and she could engage in the bloodlust that she needed to keep her sanity in check.

To take that insane bloodlust back to Kayleer, despite the will she could exert if she so wanted to, seemed like the worst of ideas.

Confused and stricken by a headache, she leaned forward and held her head in her hands. Her skin was hot. It always was. She felt sick to her stomach. She always did. The voice in her head was feeding her malignant, cancerous ideas. It always was. Truth be told without Kayleer beside her, she had gotten worse, and her haphazard appearance only confirmed it.

"Would you like me to set a course to Aether?" Jarvis asked tentatively. It was a simple yes or no question, but Tejed was having a hard time saying either. Yes meant seeing him again, but putting him in danger. And no meant staying alone, and getting worse.

"I don't knoooow," she wailed, perilously close to tears. "I just wish he were here right now."

The headache was from the insanity. She knew. Every day her head hurt more, almost as if her mind was slowly coming even more unraveled. Maybe if she honoured his request and paid him a visit, she'd feel the tiniest bit better. Maybe…

"Yes," she blurted, looking up quick and instantly regretting her decision.

"I mean no-I…"

It was too late, Jarvis had already set in the new course. She watched with confused eyes as the nearest stars became streaks, and the fabric of black seemed to move of its own accord. Eyes wide she slumped back in her seat and started chewing on her claws, face twitching.

"I could turn us around, if you like," her computer offered, but resolute she shook her head.

"No."

"As you wish."

She almost dreaded seeing Aether again, and she didn't know exactly why. Something awful had happened there, but she couldn't rightly remember. All she remembered was Kayleer. She remembered him far too well, and though he didn't make the headache go away, it made her feel that tiniest bit happier.

"What kind of gift?" she whispered, gnawing desperately on her claws. "What kind of gift could you have for a monster like me?"

Jarvis remained silent, and Aether came closer by slow, slow degrees.

Kayleer headed to a familiar boggy clearing. A wry smile creased across his mandibles when he saw a familiar sight break through the clouds.

It was raining, just as it had been their first day here together, throughout the arrival, the battle, and the aftermath. Torvus was always rainy. It was perpetual and serene, the pattering of droplets an integral part of the natural rhythm.

The hull opened. His old friend stepped out. Though he wasn't sure what part of her genetics was showing it the most, he could tell, she had aged.

The tireless engineer was alone, unaccompanied by even the dutiful, familiar mechanoid who had helped him to build the small device within his hand. He had perfected it, made it painless and ideal. And thanks to the Luminoth and their resources from Aether's purging, had had the chance to test it.

Sleek, small, and silver. The tiny hexagonal device had a malleable underside, made to fit and permeate. An injection of tiny mechanoids with only the most benevolent of purposes. It was deceitful in its simplistic appearance.

"Reverse engineering, it's rather hard, when you have nothing but concept to work from," Kayleer laughed, remembering the fiery destruction of Hades. "I know it doesn't look like much, but, hopefully, it will purge it - for good."

Slowly he approached her, respecting her space for fear she might react violently if she was surprised. He gestured with a mechanical hand, pointing to her chest- more specifically, to her heart. In his other he raised the device. "May I?"

She eyed him quizzically, feeling the smallest bit of doubt. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, but it had been so long that she didn't know what to do. She stared at him, then at the device. She cocked her head to the side, her face twitching and her body trembling, before muttering an almost inaudible 'yes'.

Shakily he placed it right above her mechanical heart. It latched on, almost undetectably, and the tiny little purgers entered her blood.

Almost instantly she jumped back, surprised. Already she could feel the old weight of anger flaring like a supernova in the back of her mind. Intense and primal. She let out a startled growl and glared at Kayleer, knowing with certainty that he had backstabbed her. The voice in her head and grown into a scream and this time she couldn't block it out.

"What did you do," she hissed. The thing in her chest did not hurt, though she viewed it with blackened hatred. He had been waiting all along, she surmised. Waiting to catch her while her guard was down and plant a dagger in her back.

"Worthless," she seethed, taking a heavy step towards him, sinking into the fetid mud. "You're WORTHLESS!"

But then something completely unexpected happened, so much so that she stopped in mid step, her voice caught in her throat. Her core body temperature was falling, by slow degrees. She felt cooler, a lot cooler than she had in many years. The fevered temperature of her skin faded and confused she straightened, looking wildly around. The constant headache dulled and disappeared completely, and when she held her hand to her head she realized she couldn't hear the voice either.

"What?" she breathed, listening. It was quiet. So quiet. Torvus sounded beautiful, without the mindless drabble of the voice to drown it all out. The thing in her chest clicked once and fell, but she caught it before it hit the mud. It glowed the most brilliant of blue. Like the sky of Earth. Shocked she took a step back.

"Kayleer I-"

Words were impossible, for they could never convey the true meaning of one's emotions.

"I mean I-"

She looked up and saw him watching from a safe distance, yet where once she would have felt the urge to rip and tear, now she felt normal. _Normal_. She felt… Sane. Impossibly so. The sheer oddness of it all was so overwhelming. What did sanity feel like? It felt like normalcy, something she was missing for upwards of two years now.

"And you…"

She smiled wide and laughed, the once homicidal insane tones of a person suffering from phazon madness gone completely. Without hesitation she leapt at Kayleer and tackled him into the mud, laughing and crying at the same time.

"Kayleer you fucking genius," she cried, feeling the cracks and tears of her ravaged mind sealing themselves bit by bit.

"You god damned fucking _genius_."

In the mud all she did was hug him tight, not so much afraid to let go as she was thankful in every possible way. The rain felt amazing. The bog sounded beautiful. And the whole of reality seemed that much more brighter.

This time Kayleer fully expected every reaction he had gotten from her. He wasn't surprised when he was met with anger, and he wasn't surprised that when it was all over, she was literally beside herself with happiness. He himself was overjoyed that his years of effort had created a cure. She was cured. She was free.

This time Kayleer didn't object to being tackled, in fact he appreciated every moment of it. He returned her tight embrace. He felt her glee, clear and beautiful, mixing perfectly with the tranquil sounds of the world around them.

In the blissful aftermath, there was nothing left to be anxious about. Tejed was the first to stand, the sucking mud playing havoc with the delicate machinery of her legs. Smiling she reached down and took Kayleer's hand, pulling him up as well.

Understanding, Kayleer gave her a w

y smile. No matter how sane she was, the mud of Torvus would never agree with her legs. Almost playfully, she led him to the mud splattered and debris streaked hull of her ship, and motioned to the top.

The sleek hull offered Tejed no resistance, her claws easily biting into the molded steel exterior of her ship. Though Kayleer struggled to keep his footing on the unfamiliar ground, she was there to pull him up. Relieved to reach the flat, manageable top of the ship, he sat down beside her.

Night had begun to fall over Torvus. The loud ruckus of daytime fauna slowly gave way to the gentler noises that accompanied the Aetherian night, and Tejed allowed herself to lean gently against Kayleer.

Kayleer sat straight, supporting her as she trusted her full weight to rest on his shoulder. He listened to the sounds of Torvus night, the soothing, placid sounds of the creatures he had grown so familiar with, now he could finally share with another. Though they were nothing new to him, the sounds elicited a curious sort of wonder in Tejed now that she could fully hear them. Against the muted clockwork chime of her mechanical heart, the sounds of Aether struck a comforting chord and she closed her eyes, at peace. Tejed drifted off to the lullaby of the natural world into the first peaceful sleep she had managed in ages. No nightmares, no terrors, only serenity.

Kayleer followed dutiful suit, his eyes fluttering shut and his head coming to rest on Tejed's. Two heartbeats, resonating together, as the pair of harmonized beings drifted off into bliss. Two promises, kept and absolved despite the odds that had been presented.

One moment, as long as eternity was short. As the universe continued its infinite dance, the spill of life all around them loud in the silence, there was nothing to experience but happiness, pure and absolute. In the dark, they both smiled. The universe was finally at peace.


End file.
